The New Chardonnay: The Unlikely Story of How Marijuana Went Mainstream

by Heather Cabot

Overview

“The inside scoop on how marijuana landed on Main Street . . . and why it’s coming soon to a city near you.”—Katie Couric
 
From gleaming dispensaries stocked with elegantly wrapped edibles to the array of CBD lotions and oils for sale at your local drugstore to tastemaker Martha Stewart cooking up marijuana munchies on prime-time television, one thing is clear: Pot has fully shed its stoner image.

In this deeply reported journey into the new world of legal cannabis, award-winning reporter Heather Cabot takes readers on the road with Snoop Dogg and his business partner Ted Chung as they roll out the star’s own brand of bud; to California wine country, where chefs and vintners are ushering in a new age of elevated dining; on wild adventures with marijuana mogul Beth Stavola, for whom fending off shady characters is just another day at the office; and to rural Canada to meet the Willy Wonka of Weed.

Drawing on exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names in the world of cannabis, Cabot’s book explores the confluence of social, economic, and political forces that have brought marijuana into the mainstream. Among them, outrage over the racial injustice of U.S. drug laws, the booming self-care industry catering to stressed-out professionals and busy parents in search of better sleep and more sex, seniors clamoring for natural alternatives to opioids to manage their aches and pains, and tens of millions of investor dollars fueling a frenetic “green rush” mentality.

The story of an astonishing rebranding, The New Chardonnay explores how a plant that was once the subject of multimillion-dollar public service announcements came to spark new culinary trends; inspire new uses for health, beauty, and wellness; and generate hundreds of thousands of jobs and untold tax revenue—all while remaining federally illegal in America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781984826244
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/11/2020
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,007,324
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Heather Cabot is an award-winning journalist and serves on the alumni board of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. A former ABC News correspondent and anchor and former digital lifestyle editor for Yahoo!, Cabot has appeared on Good Morning America, Today, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and dozens of local TV and radio stations. She is a contributor to Forbes and is the co-author of the acclaimed book Geek Girl Rising.

Read an Excerpt

1

The Queen of Cannabis

Monmouth County, New Jersey

December 2018

Beth Stavola wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. Clad in just her sparkly diamond studs and sleek black Bluetooth headset, she stretched out unselfconsciously on a cushioned massage table. As the afternoon sun streamed into her bay windowed boudoir overlooking the icy Navesink River, a few bucolic miles north of the Jersey Shore, Beth’s “body fixer,” Kathleen, discreetly released tension from her back.

While the therapist’s hands expertly kneaded her client’s aching muscles, the platinum blond business mogul propped herself up on both elbows. In her left hand she clutched two iPhones, leaving a free hand with which to occasionally slip her chunky black reading glasses onto the end of her nose as she quickly scrolled through text messages and returned an urgent call to a partner in Las Vegas. Time is money for any high-powered executive, but for one of America’s most preeminent pot dealers, time moved at warp speed.

On this brutally cold winter day, two weeks before Christmas 2018, the multimillionaire named by High Times as one of the most influential “Women of Weed” was preoccupied with a big story playing out two thousand miles away. Beth and her tight-knit Jersey-based circle of analysts and marketers had just received an email telling them they had scored highly coveted licenses to open up four new retail marijuana shops in and around Las Vegas. This was a win that would expand her empire even deeper into Sin City, where anyone over twenty-one could now buy pot just by flashing an ID. With forty-two million fun-seeking tourists descending upon the desert city every year, this opportunity had Beth and her partners seeing green.

Beth’s holdings in Nevada already included GreenMart, a high-tech facility in North Las Vegas the size of an airplane hangar, where a team of self-taught organic chemists in sterile jumpsuits, white lab coats, and surgical masks employed a proprietary method to carefully strip potent compounds from the genetically engineered crop of marijuana plants grown and hand-trimmed on-site. Using highly combustible gases and shiny pressurized gadgets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the technicians worked around the clock to delicately extract the molecules containing marijuana’s chemicals in their purest form, and refined them into valuable oil. Those beakers of viscous amber liquid that lined the lab would ultimately fill cartridges for vaping or oral gelcaps; or, in the gentle hands of a professional pastry chef, the concentrates would be mixed into an array of gaming-themed edibles like dark, milk, and white chocolates molded into the shape of dice.

The news about the licenses hadn’t yet leaked to the press. Nevada wouldn’t disclose the names of the winners until the following week, when those who had lost out on the opportunity to get in the cannabis market were sure to be miffed. In the old days, encroaching on a rival’s turf was an act of war that might end with a barrage of gunshots, a body tossed in a ditch in the dark of night, or some other gruesome consequence. But in the new landscape of lawful marijuana, an army of corporate attorneys on speed dial had supplanted the gang of sicarios available 24/7 to do the crime boss’s bidding. And from what Beth and longtime lieutenant Tenisha Victor understood from their intel coming out of Vegas that afternoon, everyone seemed to be lawyering up.

“This is how things go. Every single state is a lawsuit. The losers just sue,” explained Beth matter-of-factly when she hung up, her bare body draped by a sheet as Kathleen’s hands continued to work their magic. Her legal fight ahead in Nevada typified the intensifying land grab happening across the country, as new states and cities opened up legal sales of the drug. Even as marijuana remained not only prohibited by the federal government, but actually classified at the top of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s outlawed controlled substance list—along with heroin and cocaine—by the end of 2018, thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia had voted to legalize some sale of the cannabis plant. And ten of those states permitted marijuana sales for recreational use among adults over twenty-one, just like alcohol.

It was a whole new world. Marijuana businesses were now run by white-collar professionals who recruited new hires on LinkedIn, collected sophisticated customer acquisition data, and ran focus groups like any other consumer product company hawking toothpaste or energy drinks. More than thirty years after Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” crusade demonized marijuana, and the zealous enforcement of tough drug laws jailed hundreds of thousands of low-income black and brown offenders, high-end pot was now being sold out in the open like a fine aged Scotch or a fancy anti-wrinkle serum—not on street corners or in dark alleys, but inside gleaming new storefronts called “dispensaries” and staffed by smiling sales associates with name tags.

Instead of clandestine handoffs in ziplock dime bags, newfangled legal cannabis products—both intoxicating and not—were proudly stocked under bright department store lighting with polished hardwood floors and eye-catching displays, or featured on inviting websites ready for delivery or pickup in every variety a cannabis connoisseur could dream up: Listerine-style breath strips, dark-chocolate-covered blueberries, gourmet fruit gelées, fizzy bath bombs, lemony tinctures, erotic oils, potent waxes, stick-on skin patches, carbonated beer-like beverages, sparkling wines, herbal teas, and even suppositories. There were hundreds of choices to consider. All of the pricey products were artfully wrapped in shiny cellophane, pretty glass jars, sleek pouches and boxes, and featured an extensive lab-tested ingredient list, dosing advice, and sturdy childproof packaging. It was an extreme makeover. Weed was now marketed to an expanding audience of canna-curious customers, ranging from graying grandmas to weekend warriors to Chardonnay moms.

The American public had turned a corner and was increasingly embracing marijuana as an upstanding alternative to prescription pills, used to manage everything from chronic pain to chemotherapy side effects to seizure disorders in children to Parkinson’s tremors to post-traumatic stress disorder. According to Gallup, 66 percent of Americans favored legalization, including more than half of Republicans polled. “The devil’s lettuce” was quickly being rebranded as a magical elixir to bring about wellness to a wide cross section of consumers. Increasingly, the “high” was beside the point as savvy marketers seized on cannabidiol, also known as CBD, a compound that doesn’t induce a buzz but was promoted as a treatment for stress, insomnia, and pain.

This was an era that someone like the drug lord El Chapo could probably never have imagined. Who ever would have predicted that the man the DEA called the “godfather of the drug world”—who once carried a monogrammed diamond-encrusted pistol, rode in an armored car, and whose death squad had taken hundreds of innocent lives—would someday be competing for market share with the likes of former Wall Street executive and mother of six Beth Stavola? And yet, when legalized marijuana quickly began to cut into the cartel’s profits by 2014, he and his Sinaloa cartel were reportedly forced to shift the game away from pot to trafficking in even more heroin and methamphetamine, in an effort to maximize gains off America’s deadly addiction to opioids.

Now, just a forty-minute high-speed ferry ride away from Beth’s home office, the $14 billion don brooded in a high-security jail cell. Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera was a prisoner awaiting trial in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. The notorious kingpin, who had escaped maximum security prisons in Mexico not once but twice, using an elaborate network of underground tunnels—the same method he used to smuggle billions of dollars of illegal drugs over the border—was finally taken down when the DEA recruited his head of IT to secretly install spyware on his mistress’s BlackBerry. If El Chapo typified the bloody ruthlessness of the sinister drug underworld, Beth Stavola personified the professionalism of the modern-day marijuana honcho operating strictly by the book and, increasingly, in the public eye.

Beth is the first to admit that she knew nothing about weed when she and her husband first decided to invest a million dollars in Arizona’s fledgling medical marijuana market in late 2012. Back then, most of the big players in this newly legitimate market saw her as just some rich lady from back East with too much time and cash on her hands. The naysayers had no idea whom they were dealing with.

Table of Contents

Cast of Characters ix

Legalization Timeline xi

Introduction xiii

1 The Queen of Cannabis 3

2 Playing to Win 14

3 Snoop and Ted's Excellent Adventures 24

4 A Chef Is Born 34

5 The Willy Wonka of Weed 41

6 What's Booze Got to Do with It? 50

7 Mormons for Marijuana 64

8 The New Canna Consumer 72

9 The Magic Seeds 85

10 New Sheriff in Town 94

11 420 Gourmet 110

12 Cannabis Culture for All 118

13 In Bubbe's Kitchen 129

14 Double or Nothing 139

15 Pot on Prime Time 152

16 Snoop's Star Power 160

17 Drinking Salad Dressing 170

18 The End of Prohibition 184

19 CBD Sister Act 195

20 Green Gold 212

21 The Big 420 Finale 219

Acknowledgments 247

Sources 251

Notes 253

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

07/06/2020

Journalist Cabot (coauthor, Geek Girl Rising) delivers an admiring examination of shifting attitudes toward cannabis and of the activists and entrepreneurs behind that change. Cabot follows Beth Stavola, a New Jersey mom of six and former Wall Street executive, as she invests in Arizona’s medical marijuana industry and expands into well-appointed dispensaries in Nevada and Maryland. Cabot also showcases unexpected legalization advocates, such as former U.S. attorney and devout Mormon Mel McDonald, who changed his opinion on marijuana after seeing how it helped his son’s chronic epilepsy. Readers also meet Bruce Linton, the “Willy Wonka of Weed,” so dubbed because he opened up what would become the world’s largest growing facility in a former Hershey’s chocolate processing plant in Smiths Falls, Ontario; and “cannabis chef” Jeff Danzer, whose tasteless, odorless, but precisely dosable cannabinoid oil enabled him to create gourmet food and drink experiences with a mild THC buzz. The diversity and respectability of these entrepreneurs helps to underscore Cabot’s central argument that “Chardonnay moms” looking to “shrug off the day” or to maximize their “wellness” are the new target market for cannabis products, and her clear affection for and appreciation of her subjects makes for juicy reading. Those seeking an agnostic investigation of these developments, though, should look elsewhere. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

The recasting of the cannabis consumer from stoner on the sofa to yoga-mat-toting Whole Foods shopper is delightfully chronicled in Heather Cabot’s book The New Chardonnay.”—Financial Times

“Heather Cabot’s book about cannabis is packed with entertaining stories starring fantastic, Hollywood-ready characters. It happens to center on marijuana, but it’s also about capitalism, politics, and psychology. In short, this book is good shit.”—A. J. Jacobs, New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically

“The New Chardonnay reads more like a novel than investigative journalism as Cabot presents the fascinating tale of how cannabis went mainstream. From ruthless Las Vegas kingpins vying to open the first pot shops in the state to the senior citizens riding a cannabis shuttle to stock up on staple and THC tea parties for Bay Area mommies, this well-researched story of how the once ‘evil weed’ became a multibillion-dollar industry is a page-turner.”—Lee Woodruff, New York Times bestselling author of Those We Love Most

“The New Chardonnay is the story of an astonishing rebranding. Through deep reporting and engaging storytelling, Cabot narrates the history of how legal cannabis shed its unsavory stigma and blossomed into a booming legitimate industry. The ingenuity unleashed by the ambitious entrepreneurs you’ll meet in these pages holds lessons for any entrepreneur or innovator looking for opportunities in uncharted territory.”—Daymond John, star of ABC’s Shark Tank and New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Broke, Rise and Grind, and Powershift

“I’m a two-time cancer survivor, and CBD and medical cannabis have been a big part of my healing. In The New Chardonnay, you’ll meet the unlikely entrepreneurs who have worked tirelessly to bring this plant that heals so many out of the shadows. It’s impossible not to be captivated while reading about the ups and downs, the triumphs and struggles, and the fascinating characters they encountered on their journey.”—Ethan Zohn, winner of CBS’s Survivor, health and wellness expert, and cannabis entrepreneur

“An intriguing, character-driven narrative about ‘a complicated and controversial topic’. . . An entertaining story of the curious arc that brought the cannabis industry out of the shadows.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
“Filled with thought-provoking interviews and a cast of characters including Snoop Dogg and his business partner Ted Chung . . . this fun and enlightening read accurately summarizes the forward momentum that the cannabis industry has enjoyed these past few years, and provides an in-depth look at the movement's influence on social justice, modern cultural norms, and politics.”—Booklist

From the Publisher

07/10/2020

The changes in legislation toward cannabis in the United States and Canada over the past decade have created a new economy that mixes technology, culture, and cuisine. While traversing the country to follow Beth Stavola's evolution from banking VP to marijuana entrepreneur, Cabot (Geek Girl Rising) delves into the new frontier of building businesses based on a semilegal product. The author jumps among different narratives to reflect the massive movement that began with the first hints at legalization. While recounting the ups and downs of Stavola's business, she also follows rapper Snoop Dogg and TV producer Ted Chung, as they create a media and medical empire that adheres to Snoop's personal philosophy, and Jeff Danzer, "The 420 Chef," renowned for his edibles, who helps push cannabis cuisine to the next level. Cabot also focuses on the developments within Canada's legalized marijuana industry and shows how it has spurred the fledgling U.S. industry. The book does for the cannabis industry what Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine did for the microcomputer industry 40 years ago. VERDICT Cabot cuts through the hype and romance of the counterculture to identify the emergence of a burgeoning industry focused on housewives and seniors. Highly recommended.—John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston

Library Journal

2020-08-18
The complicated story of how marijuana went from back alleys to a multibillion-dollar American industry.

In Geek Girl Rising (2017), former ABC news correspondent Cabot spotlighted successful professional women in the male-dominated tech industry. Here, she applies the same investigative reporting skills to the now-mushrooming cannabis industry, producing an intriguing, character-driven narrative about “a complicated and controversial topic.” Wisely, the author focuses on primary figures who have not only profited from this new enterprise, but changed the culture around the substance as well—e.g., Beth Stavola, a Jersey Shore mother who attained wealth in the Arizona medical marijuana business; Wanda James, the first Black entrepreneur to own a business license in the cannabis industry; Bruce Linton, the founder of the first marijuana company to trade publicly; and Mel MacDonald, “former U.S. Attorney appointed by President Ronald Reagan, fifth-generation Mormon, elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), and unexpected supporter of legalizing medical marijuana.” Perhaps the most interesting figure is Jeff Danzer, a home cook who has sought to match the various flavors and aromas of cannabis to a wide variety of dishes as well as distilling the plant down its purest, most delectable essences. Danzer created cuisine so delightful that Kate Hudson served up his treats at her star-studded birthday party, and he eventually earned the nickname “Julia Child of Weed.” Another prominent figure is Ted Chung, a Wharton alum who leads Snoop Dogg’s cannabis investment strategy. On stage in 2019, Snoop noted, “I love the fact that I used to be a bad guy known for smoking weed like you used to read about me….Now it’s all love and it’s all peace and all understanding.” Indeed—and Cabot covers much of the relevant territory, from entrepreneurship to women’s health to social justice.

An entertaining story of the curious arc that brought the cannabis industry out of the shadows.

Kirkus Reviews