As a general rule, when you enter a marijuana dispensary, flower products fall under one of three categories: low-, mid-, and top-shelf. These classifications are designed to reflect quality, and they’re priced accordingly. But what do these cannabis types really mean?
If you’re new to the world of legal cannabis, a word of advice: don’t always trust labels. Not every dispensary operates in good faith or possesses the information needed to make these qualitative distinctions.
“In most cases, labels like low-, mid-, and high-grade are sales tools to present an easy to understand sales strategy like a car salesman does—such as, how much do you want to spend on a car?,” Sean Black, High Times’ Cannabis Cup competition director, told High Times. “There are more meaningful sales descriptions that can inform a buyer of the cannabis’ quality… Labels such as private reserve, special stock etc are merely sales tools to indicate higher prices.”
“Be wary of gimmicks and theatrics,” Black said. “The plant should speak for the quality—and anything that says they’re the greatest or best in packaging generally tends not to be. Growers that are passionate and great at what they do are too focused and busy for smoke and mirrors.”
There are plenty of guides out there that attempt to help navigate users toward high-quality products based on various physical and chemical characteristics, but insiders will tell you that your most important asset when you visit a dispensary is your nose.
“The biggest thing I’m looking for [in a top-shelf strain] is a distinct sense of smell,” said Jake Browne, co-founder of The Grow-Off and The Denver Post’s first pot critic. “Jars should smell distinctly different from other jars, and there should be a