We all live in a (green) submarine
STEVE WEINER holds the first retail cannabis license issued in Taos for @taoscannabis.com. Weiner and his wife moved here from the Bay Area during the pandemic. His wife Ekin is Turkish, and the two met in San Francisco. Bath culture was something they had in common, and today, they publish a glossy magazine, edited by Ekin, aptly entitled “Hamam.”
Weiner has a fascinating background, beginning after high school, when he attended Annapolis which led to him to operating nuclear submarines. He’s also worked as a cannabis regulator for the past several years, making his arrival in New Mexico extra timely. Although he says it was not his intention to get into the retail end of the industry when he got here, he is in the process of opening a retail location in the heart of town. His reasons for changing his mind are many, but ultimately, it comes down to the way the plant is grown. He advocates for heritage growers who cultivate outdoors and compares the process to producing fine wines.
“New Mexico cannabis (heritage strains) is as good as any I’ve tried anywhere,” he told me, “and I’m hoping we can make it as recognizable as strains from Humboldt for example.”
While he waits for the red tape to be cut away, Weiner, who will be contributing to Tempo’s new column (High Times in the High Desert), was happy to answer a few questions.
You went to Annapolis, and wound up operating submarines — can you elaborate a bit — were you just this geeky kid growing up on Long Island — how did you go from point A to point B?
I grew up in Long Island, New York and was drawn to the water. I learned to sail at a young age and had this wild idea to apply to the Naval Academy. No one I knew in my suburban peer group was joining the military, but I saw the life of a young naval officer as some new kind of adventure to be had. I was accepted into Annapolis and started boot camp two days after graduating from high school.
The Naval Academy is quite an alternative college experience, though I really enjoyed my studies and the camaraderie amongst the students. I decided to serve in the submarine force so I could learn how to operate nuclear reactors, which provide power generation and propulsion for the Navy’s entire undersea fleet. I spent the better part of three years on a fast-attack submarine, deploying throughout the Pacific and Arctic Oceans for top secret missions. It was a great first job, especially because I got to work with amazing and inspiring sailors from all walks of life. The Navy sent me all over the world, and being a naval officer taught me life skills that I draw upon to this day.
How did this career trajectory bring you to the West Coast — where you also met your Turkish wife — and regulating cannabis?
I got out of the Navy to attend Wharton and earn an MBA. I focused my studies on entrepreneurship, because my father was self-employed and I was excited by startup innovation. I had ideas about new ventures to pursue, so I beat a path to San Francisco, where I met my (now) wife, Ekin Balcioglu, while taking a schvitz at a traditional Russian bathhouse. After a few years in the Silicon Valley grind, I realized that I didn’t jive with the startup scene. I had been reading and soaking up everything I could about the freshly-legalized cannabis market in California and felt a calling to get involved. California’s cannabis rules reminded me of the operating procedures and technical manuals I used to pore over on the submarine, and I found work advising legacy cannabis growers on achieving compliance and profitability. I cut my teeth on farms in Humboldt County that had been homesteaded decades prior, and over which the U.S. military flew helicopters during the height of the War on Drugs. Needless to say, navigating Humboldt in the post-prohibition era, where there
were over 1,000 licensed cannabis farms, was quite the life experience.
Yours was a pandemic move like so many we hear about, and you have welcomed your first child here in this valley — presumably the mountain embraced you, and enabled you to bring your expertise to this burgeoning market — tell us a little about this new project, and how it came about?
Ekin and I were visiting her family in Turkey when the initial pandemic lockdowns began. All air travel was grounded indefinitely, so our two-week trip turned into an extended vacation that ended with an evacuation flight back to the states in late April, 2020. We immediately packed our bags and the cat into the car and drove out of San Francisco in search of wide-open spaces and a new place to live. The journey took us to Taos, and we have been here ever since. Candidly, I had no clue about the status of New Mexico’s cannabis market and could not have predicted that the state would soon end prohibition. I figured that my experience with regulation on nuclear submarines and in California’s messy and bureaucratic recreational cannabis market could be well-served on New Mexico’s cannabis regulatory advisory committee. Unfortunately, I was not selected, and took it as a sign to start a business instead. I had seen many examples of how not to do things in California, and instead, wanted to build a values-based cannabis company for the modern era. New Mexico’s cannabis regulations don’t have a distributor license, which enables retailers to enter into direct trade deals with producers. This means growers will see better prices if retailers behave judiciously. New Mexico also legislated a license for vertically integrated operations, and I received one of the first one’s issued by the state in early January. Taos has historically been a strategic center for trade in the Southwest, and has long been a town that has embraced creative outsiders. It is in this spirit that we’ll open the first retail location for Taos Cannabis Co. this summer in the historic downtown area.
I digress, but you were into bath culture when you decided to move here — have you explored New Mexico’s fantastic thermal waters yet?
Yes, of course. Ekin and I publish a print-only bathing publication called Hamam Magazine. We have traveled the world in search of excellent places to soak, and New Mexico has so many, often hidden, gems. One of my favorite bathing spots is actually not hot springs, but cold arsenic springs in the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. That’s all I’ll say, so hopefully it doesn’t get overrun with too many soakers.
You received the first cannabis license for retail here in Taos — how do you plan to stay at the forefront?
Taos Cannabis Co. got off to a quick start getting the state license and town permit ahead of everyone else. At the moment, we’re stuck in line like so many others waiting for a title transfer. While we wait to open our doors to the public, we’re building relationships with licensed producers and microproducers conscientiously growing craft cannabis. Our mission is to bring cultivators and customers closer together, and we’re reimagining the whole cannabis-buying experience. We can’t have a farmers’ market per se, but Taos Cannabis Co. will introduce new ways for customers to get to know the people that produce the high-quality flower in our shop.
Discover more online at taoscannabis.com
Steve Weiner can be reached at 818631-2222