Page 52 - AVN December 2016

Ganja Gear
In his article on adult industry members who are cashing in on the
Green Rush, Mark Kernes talks at length to Darren Roberts, the former
AVN Media Network CEO who is now heading up a B2B magazine
covering the cannabis industry. Roberts shared some back issues of mg,
and we found some choice products reviewed in its pages that might be
of interest to adult retailers. Below are some excerpts from mg’s reviews.
Cheech & Chong Glass Oil Rigs “Everyone’s favorite cannabis icons
offer impressive oil rigs. The concentrate bubblers and recyclers bear
amusing names like Ashley Roachclip, Mounties to the Rescue, and
Love Machine.” CheechAndChongGlass.com
Customizable O.penVape Pen “People can customize their shoes,
laptops, cell phones and just about anything else these days, so why not
their vape pens?” OpenVape.com
Dabsolute Concentrate Pen “Made in America with superior
craftsmanship and materials (surgical stainless steel), the Dabsolute
Concentrate Pen will never break if used properly.”
TheDabsolutePen.com
EquipCanna “Nothing says the holidays more than a customized
vape pen for your favorite and loyal customers. EquipCanna does just
that: They offer 0.25 and 0.5 mL disposable vape pens in a variety of
colors with your logo front and center. Minimum order: 1,000 units.
EquipCanna.com
Marley Naturals Bubbler “A crossbreed of a water and dry pipe—not
only a design marvel but very functional due to its premium filtration
effect. Easy to clean, impressive to own.” MarleyNaturalShop.com
Mad Toto Crush-Proof Stash Kits “Crush-proof stash kits in an array
of colors and sizes, as well as non-stick containers and tools for ‘the
stickiest of goos.’ ... Your action sports customers will be drooling.”
MadToto.com
Roll-Uh-Bowl This unique bong is “perfect for adventurous and on-
the-go customers ... easily fits in a pocket, purse or fanny pack.”
Roll-Uh-Bowl.com
Santa Cruz Shredder 4-Piece Shredders “These medical-grade
herb shredders are the ultimate tech toys. Made of ultrasonically
cleaned anodized aluminum, they bear a full lifetime manufacturer’s
guarantee.” SantaCruzShredder.com
Sneakguard “The container employs a combination lock and is
vacuum-sealable to prevent air from entering or leaving the chamber,
which means what’s stored inside stays chaste and fresh.”
SneakGuard.com
Smoke Buddy Finally, here’s one that AVN recommends: This
FEATURE
personal air filter helps to eliminate odors and remove smoke of all
types both indoors and outdoors. Available in a dozen colors and three
different sizes, it holds a charcoal filter system that filters out second-
hand smoke. SmokeBuddy.com
52 | AVN.com | 12.16
medical purposes, but the main one for me is, I have seizures and I used to have them almost 24
hours a day three days a week,” she reported. “Common medication never worked for me; I wasn’t a
candidate for brain surgery and I had doctors from all over the country and the world come to see me
and study my case. I was living in New Jersey at the time, and they have medical [marijuana use] now
but it’s very corrupted, and my doctors told me, ‘We wish we could give it to you but we can’t,’ so I
had to leave everything, leave my family and I was a medical marijuana refugee and I still am.”
(Bobbi’s good news? “Starting when I was about 16. I worked with a couple of senators in New
Jersey to get medical marijuana passed because I was the example; here’s me having seizures; I
smoke—now no seizures.”)
In recent years, a few actresses have even incorporated their love of pot into their stage names, such
as Karla Kush, Sativa Rose and Sensi Pearl (slang for the seedless marijuana known as sinsemilla)...
and then there’s Jenna Indica, er, Sativa.
“I really wanted a pot-related name, and I was originally going between ‘Sativa’ and ‘Indica,’ and I
really liked Jenna, and I thought Jenna Sativa sounded better,” she explained. “And I also love smoking
sativa because it gives you energy and I can smoke it in the morning and still have a productive day, So
I felt like Jenna Sativa totally matched me and it was my name.”
While Sativa doesn’t yet have a strain or device of her own, “What I do do right now is, I work at
weed events, so companies will hire me to represent their brand, and I also have a large following on
Instagram, so I post a lot of vines and things from the weed community. People send me infused bath
balms or products for me to try, and the things that I do like, I recommend them to my friends and
I share them amongst my followers, because I know a lot of my followers are stoners; a lot of them
don’t even watch porn, but whenever I do post weed-related stuff, it always has great engagement, so I
love doing things in the weed community, plus I’m a stoner too, obviously.”
And how has that worked out? “Oh, yeah, my fans love it, totally. People love watching girls
smoking and taking baths. Pretty much, I’m just being myself; it’s my life on Instagram.”
Though federal legalization is likely years off, considering the upcoming Republican administration
in Washington, the pot business is growing rapidly—so of course, it will need publications to track
industry trends and inform readers of new technical and legal realities. One such magazine, and the
only one with national distribution, is mg, a marijuana-centric trade magazine which takes its name
from the abbreviation for the metric weight measure, “milligram,” used by most pot businesses, and
founded by former AVN CEO and co-owner Darren Roberts, who’s now the CEO of Cann Media
Group, the magazine’s publisher.
“My thinking about this [marijuana] business started back in about 1996 with Prop 215 in
California, and being at AVN and running a B2B business, it was fascinating to me how that was going
to play out, not just in California but in the rest of the nation,” Roberts told AVN. “And it was a long
waiting period, just keeping an eye on what was happening, and I guess in 2012, you had Washington
and Colorado that legalized recreationally, and then a couple of years later, when Alaska and Oregon
came on board, that caught my attention, because I saw there was a trend happening. Now, supply and
demand to retail outlets is what I had done for so many years, even before AVN, educating retailers
on products and how to more effectively run their businesses. So really when Alaska and Oregon
[legalized] in 2014, that’s when I really started putting a little bit of resources on this, and mapping
the market, taking a look at how many dispensaries or wellness centers were up and functioning, and
we started compiling data.”
The first issue of mg is cover-dated August 2015, and its editor in chief was and continues to be
Tom Hymes, another AVN alum. The magazine covers news of the industry, profiles dispensaries and
their owners, gives advice on store ambiance (“5 things you can do today to give your dispensary an
authentic rock & roll vibe”), covers advances in pot-growing technology, growing niche markets like
edibles, and pretty much anything related to the cannabis industry.
“We compiled data for close to a year before we published, and it was not quite as easy as I
anticipated it to be, just because these businesses that you needed to reach, there’s no list available,”
Roberts explained. “You could buy lists for where licenses are issued, but the majority of the market
did not hold licenses, and especially when you started getting into grows, to really reach the people,
that target market, you had to really hit the road and build relationships. ... It’s déjà vu for me,
because it goes back to the adult business and the retail stores and the fact that you’re dealing in a
volatile market, which is what I’d dealt with at AVN for at least 16 years, where people are on edge as
far as sharing information.
“These markets, they’re not traditional markets,” he continued. “In any other industry, if you have
manufacturing, you can acquire lists and you can mine the data and it’s pretty easy. I have a history of
dealing in industries that are less open and dealing with legislation and different federal regulations
and/or state regulations and/or community standards and so and so forth, so I think that made getting
into this business a little bit easier for us, because my experience at AVN definitely gave us a lot of
credibility at the beginning. When a lot of these companies found out where I’d come from, I think
they were a little more comfortable because they understood that I understood, and they understood
that I also understood what they had to risk by sharing information with me, so it’s been a few years