Reeferfront Times

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REEFERFRONT TIMES

[DISPENSARY REVIEW]

Tommy Chims Smokes High Profile’s Weed

Written by THOMAS CHIMCHARDS

In the mid-1800s, some 400,000 Americans set out on a 2,170mile trek from Missouri to Oregon in search of their fortunes, braving unforgiving terrain, brutal weather conditions and the threat of dysentery, which was artfully defined for me by my grade-school computer teacher as “when you poop yourself to death.”

In those days, it was the prospect of gold in the west that led many to make that arduous journey. But now, with the so-called “Green Rush” sending investors and entrepreneurs all around the globe in search of their slice of the $48 billion-plus the cannabis industry is projected to be worth by 2027, some Oregonians are finding their way back to the Show Me State.

Enter High Profile (1416 Harvestowne Industrial Drive, St. Charles; 636-224-6033), the latest addition to St. Charles’ medical marijuana landscape. Opened on May 5 off Route 94, the fresh new dispensary is one part of multistate cannabis company C3 Industries’ retail operation and one of seven dispensaries the brand currently has open across three states. C3, which is now based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, got its start in Portland in 2018 with the opening of a 36,000-square-foot indoor cultivation facility for its Cloud Cover Cannabis grow operation. The company has expanded rapidly in the years since, with a second production facility in Webberville, Michigan already in operation and a third in the works in Massachusetts.

With all of that travel across the country in pursuit of untold riches, I can only assume there must have been a lot of party members who pooped themselves to death along the way. And so, to honor their sacrifice, I figured the least I could do is point my own vehicle westward and go buy myself some weed in St. Chuck.

High Profile is housed in an industrial park in the home of a former bank. It’s got teller lanes on the side of the building, which will eventually be used for a drivethrough operation — something I’m a huge fan of, to be sure, but which is currently not in use. Upon walking in the doors you enter a waiting room with midcentury modern furnishings and a black and white motif, with accents provided by wallpaper decked out with the shop’s “High” logo.

After handing my ID and medical card to a man waiting behind a desk, I walked with my budtender to the sales oor. Inside, the space is relatively spare, with glass counters on three sides of the room housing the shop’s products, which include apparel and accessories in addition to cannabis. Since it only recently opened, High Profile currently has a somewhat limited selection, and it’s currently stocking Glasshaus-branded ower and Clover-branded prerolls rather than its own Cloud Cover products. My budtender explained that C3 plans to build out its own grow operation in Missouri in the fall, with the first harvest coming sometime next year. On my visit they had Animal Mintz, Chem Scout, Layer Cake, Lemon Haze, Pink Citrus Farmer, Sundae Driver and Wedding Cake ower in stock.

I went with an eighth of the Layer Cake ($55) and a pre-roll of Gorilla Glue 4 ($15). High Profile offers a deal for first-time customers wherein you get one pre-roll for only a penny on your first visit, so I made it two Gorilla Glues, knowing well that this was definitely a strain I wanted to get my hands on. The dispensary also has a selection of edibles from Honeybee, Wana, Robhots and Keef, but what caught my eye was a small pill bottle full of “night capsules” labeled Vivid Dreams ($50). After taxes my total came out to $132.35.

I took a couple of the capsules almost immediately upon walking out of the store. The nature of the chronic pain that qualifies me for medical marijuana is as such that crappy weather makes it hurt more, and the day of my visit was a particularly rainy one, so I decided to get things started right away. These capsules come from an indica strain that clocked in at 24.66 percent THC, according to the packaging, and each capsule contains 14.5 milligrams of THC. Boy, did they work wonders. Within an hour of taking two of them my pain began to subside, eventually melting away about as much as it can, and I began to feel some pressure under my eyes and a relaxed, stony feeling in my brain that lasted a couple of hours. Contrary to my expectations based on the nighttime-referencing packaging, I wasn’t laid at by the stuff, and I actually continued to function nicely throughout the rest of the evening. My only complaint with these is that they kind of take the fun out of cannabis — my preferred method of ingestion is smoking, and if I’m going to take an edible I like when it at least tastes good, like Honeybee’s offerings. Putting pot in pill form eliminates some of the mystique for this seasoned smoker, but I’d bet that there are plenty of people out there who would see the fact that you can just pop a pill and be on your way as a huge plus, especially since they’re so effective with pain.

Next up, I dove into the Gorilla Glue pre-roll. Gorilla Glue is a notoriously potent hybrid strain grown by crossing Chem’s Sister, Sour Dubb and Chocolate Diesel, and a winner of multiple Cannabis Cups and even the High Times

At present, High Profile is carrying Glasshaus-branded flower, like this pile of Layer Cake, but by next year they’ll be stocking their own product. | TOMMY CHIMS

HIGHER THOUGHT S

From the altered mind of THOMAS CHIMCHARDS

Welcome to Higher Thoughts, wherein ol’ Tommy Chims smokes one strain from this review — in this case, Layer Cake — and then immediately writes whatever comes to mind in the hopes of giving you, dear reader, a clearer picture of its overall mental effects: no rules, no predetermined word counts and, most crucially, no editing. Here we go:

IF KID ROCK owned and operated a daycare for cradle-dwelling children it would be called a “kid rockery.”

Was that helpful? Who knows! See you next week.

Thomas K. Chimchards is RFT’s resident cannabis correspondent and envier of Robert James Ritchie’s ability to live nearly his entire life in a shirtless state. Email him tips at tommy.chim@riverfronttimes.com and follow him on Twitter at @TOMMYCHIMS

High Profile has taken over a former bank for its dispensary. | COURTESY HIGH PROFILE

Jamaican World Cup. The halfgram joint had a rich, delicious coffee-and-weed smell when I took it out of its packaging, and it burned clean throughout, delivering a grassy and fuel-like taste that gave way to a sort of saki and black licorice feeling in the back of the throat. Clovr-branded and rated at 19.41 percent THC, I put it out about halfway through, because I was absolutely toasted. I’m talking space-cadet high, with the bags under my eyes weighing a thousand pounds, my chronic pain nicely soothed (this was another rainy day, too, so that’s another huge win) and a blissful forgetfulness that saw me repeatedly wander into rooms in my home and then immediately forget what I went in there for. As it turns out I didn’t need two of these after all — just half of one worked out phenomenally well on two occasions — but I certainly am glad to have another one in my supply.

I got into the Layer Cake next. Glasshaus-branded and rated at 17.85 percent THC, the jar boasts uffy, dark green popcorn buds with orange hairs and a dusting of trichomes, and, to use a perhaps confusing but nonetheless accurate descriptor I have employed once before to characterize the smell of a previous strain, it’s got a real “old people house” smell to it. (I’m not totally sure what that means either, but that’s where my head immediately went, and I’m not sure why. Maybe grandma smoked a lot of weed when I was growing up?) On breakup, the little ower pieces fell easily off the stem and crumbled effortlessly in my fingers without leaving behind any stickiness — no grinder required. On inhale, this strain tastes sweet and grassy, with a fuel-like sensation in the throat and sinuses, and I didn’t find it particularly cough-inducing. I wrote in my notes that it tastes like “sweet furniture, like a nice couch from Goodwill smells when you get it home, but sweetened.” It is possible that this description, even more absurd than the “old people house” one above, came about as a result of my altered state of mind after smoking — I was grinning ear-to-ear and giggly, feeling relaxed and engaged and suitably euphoric, but not couch-locked. What this strain lacks in bag appeal it more than makes up for in effects I’ll definitely be buying more next time I can.

As the Missouri medical marijuana industry matures over the coming years, we’re sure to see plenty of these larger, nationally franchised operations trek to town in the hopes of scoring big in the world of cannabis sales. And as High Profile gets its footing and gets its grow operation off the ground, its prices will plummet accordingly, making it a strong competitor in the dispensary world.

In other words: The locally based operations may not love it, but the Green Rush has come to Missouri — dysentery be damned. n

Missouri Drug Offenders Left Out by Legislative Blunder

Written by DANNY WICENTOWSKI

Trapped in prison sentences equivalent to those convicted of violent crimes, Missouri’s “prior and persistent” drug offenders have experienced a recent run of high hopes and devastating disappointments.

On May 14, the very last day of the Missouri legislative session, what amounted to a clerical error deleted an amendment from a key public safety bill, killing a measure that would have restored parole to potentially dozens of drug offenders.

But even before that blunder, legislative and legal attempts to address the plight of drug offenders sentenced under the harsh “three strike” sentencing law have failed — though not before igniting hope for relief, if only brie y.

In 2017, the Missouri legislature repealed the “prior and persistent” drug offender statute, which for years had effectively multiplied punishments for prior drug offenders, adding decades to sentences and even barring them from the system of supervised release known as parole. But the repeal was fatally awed, and, in 2020, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that it could not be applied retroactively.

“They can’t even give that sentence anymore,” notes Timothy Prosser in an interview from the Southeast Correctional Center, where he’s spent much of the past eighteen years on a life sentence for a meth-related trafficking charge.

Even among the extreme sentences produced by the state’s old drug laws, the 60-year-old inmate is an outlier.

“I’m the last one,” Prosser says. “The only one to have this life sentence for a non-violent drug case.”

In 2016, the RFT profiled Prosser and his startling sentence. As confirmed by the Missouri Depart-

Timothy Prosser, shown in 2016, is serving a life sentence for drug charges. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

ment of Corrections, he is indeed the only known offender serving a life sentence for drug crimes in a Missouri prison.

Prosser was convicted in 2003 for first-degree trafficking, which, brie y, made him a potential beneficiary of Senate Bill 26, which included an amendment restoring parole to some drug offenders who had lost their eligibility with the “prior and persistent” designation.

As the RFT first reported last week that the bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support on May 14, but the amendment affecting drug offenders did not.

Prosser’s trafficking charge and time-served would have made him eligible for parole under the terms of the amendment, which was written to affect only those charged with first- and seconddegree trafficking. While not the same thing as a guaranteed release, the change would have allowed the offenders to finally have their cases heard by the specialized board which approves parole for thousands every year.

The amendment was on track until it wasn’t. Despite the measure crossing the final hurdles into the final bill, somewhere along the line, for reasons still not clear, a Senate “drafter” removed the amendment before the vote. (The amendment sponsor, Republican Rep. Cheri Toalson Reisch, says she believes the drafter may have mistakenly interpreted the amendment’s statutory language as an error and deleted it in an overzealous act of caution.)

Although it was intended for

The amendment was on track — until it wasn’t. Despite the measure crossing the final hurdles into the final bill, somewhere along the line, for reasons still not clear, a Senate “drafter” removed the amendment before the vote.

the final version of the bill, the amendment had been cut without the knowledge of the House leadership or its sponsor, who found out about the error only days after the vote.

“I’m disappointed that it didn’t go through,” Prosser says of the amendment’s erasure.

The legislative debacle puts Prosser back at square one. Like others designated as “prior and persistent” offenders, he has spent years submitting clemency petitions to multiple governors. He’s filed legal motions, all unsuccessful, arguing that the 2017 repeal should apply to old cases as well as the new ones.

He’s also been closely following Gov. Mike Parson’s recent commutations.

“Pretty much the only hope I have is that he’s looking at my case,” Prosser says. “I have a clemency petition I’m hoping he looks at.”

While Parson’s clemency selection process is secretive, the governor has taken a notable interest in the plight of “prior and persistent” drug offenders. Since 2020, Parson has commuted the sentences of nine of them, with his most recent clemency announcement restoring parole to Robert Franklin, who has served fourteen years of a 22-year prison sentence for a marijuana-related trafficking charge.

For drug offenders convicted today, there is no need to rely on the governor’s mercy. In 2020, Missouri’s parole board released more than 5,000 people from prison on supervised release. Under the state’s updated, post-2017 criminal code, even prior drug offenders are eligible for parole after serving a longer percentage of their full sentence.

But with a life sentence and no parole, there is no percentage Prosser can hit for early release. His sentence will last as long as he does.

“Not much has changed here, day after day,” he says. “I just try to work on my case.”

Of course, things changed significantly as the pandemic hit Missouri prisons, threatening not just prisoners’ health, but triggering new policies barring visitation and further limiting their connections to the outside world.

Prosser, 60, lost more than just visitations. In June, his father succumbed to CO ID-19. It was a fastmoving illness, Prosser says. He never got the opportunity to say goodbye.

Prosser may have a uniquely long sentence, but without the amendment previously intended for Senate Bill 26, he’s in the same position as the roughly 230 other offenders saddled with the “prior and persistent” label. Like him, they are still serving no-parole sentences under a law that legislators agree should no longer exist but can’t seem to fix.

For Prosser, all that’s left to do is wait — and hope that Parson or next year’s legislative session brings better news.

“One thing you learn here, unfortunately, is patience,” he says. n