Perhaps to calm his own nerves or those of the audience that came to hear his keynote address Saturday afternoon at NECANN in Boston, Jim Belushi of Belushi’s Farm and numerous other vocations pulled out a harmonica before he even said a word and gave the room a sampling of his laudable blues chops. He riffed for a few minutes and finished with two quick toots as the standing-room crowd erupted in a vigorous round of applause for the multifaceted entertainer who came to talk about the triumphs and tribulations of cultivating and selling cannabis, his move into the New England market, and the launch of season three of his Discovery channel reality show, Growing Belushi, the start date for which he was told not to reveal. He did anyway. It will be in April.

Rather than deliver a traditional keynote address, Belushi was interviewed by NECANN co-founder and President Marc Shepard, which was probably a good idea given the time constraint and Belushi’s improvisational approach to public speaking. Still, Belushi has over the years been interviewed many times about his cannabis endeavors, and it’s safe to say his origin stories have long since become a staple of his narrative on the subject. Like all good storytellers, though, he makes them sound fresh, and a little different, every time.

Saturday, he told the story behind the “paradigm shift” that changed his personal motivation for working in cannabis from money to medicine, and, like a band that has to play its hits in concert, he also regaled the Boston audience with the tale of the Captain Jack strain, how it infamously became “the smell of SNL” and how it was the first cultivar Belushi grew for sale at the Oregon farm he acquired in 2015. That story and others can be found here. Currently, Belushi’s Farm products are available in Oregon, Colorado, Oklahoma, Illinois, Massachusetts, and, as Belushi said at the show, in Maine.

“Well, I’m a pretty stupid guy,” said Belushi in response to Shepard’s question about how he got started in the medical side of the industry. “I take a lot of risks, and that’s the nature of being an improvisational actor and an actor; you fail more than you succeed. I bought this farm in Oregon, and the farm behind me came up for sale, and I bought it. Weed was legal, and I thought I knew agriculture. Dan Aykroyd put me in touch with Captain Jack, who was the weed dealer for SNL. He had this great Afghani strain, which was originally for hash only, and he had some seeds from the Kush mountains that he had brought that back to the United States. He grew along the creeks, he would take it to SNL, and he was known as the smell of SNL. That was the stuff that Danny and a few of the writers were smoking and coming up with Coneheads and all that stuff. It really was a creative weed although there’s a lot of Myrcene in it, so you don’t want to smoke too much of it. I started growing that and it was the gold rush back then. It was all about, ‘Oh, you can make so much money.’”

Paradigm Shift

“What happened was – and I’ve told the story before but it’s really the turning point – we were loading up our car with weed and going to the dispensaries in Portland. I mean, I was delivering the weed I grew. I learned how to grow and learned how to keep the soil at 62 degrees in order for the micronutrients to absorb into the roots. I was learning everything, and one day we went to a dispensary and there were maybe 100 people waiting to meet me. And as they walked by us to go into the dispensary, I tapped them on the shoulder to say, ‘Hi, I’ll see you inside,’ and there was one gentleman who had long hair, blue eyes, little beard, skinny guy, and I passed his eyes and I just came back, and I looked at him, and I went, ‘Are you all right, man?’

“And he said, ‘I was a medic in Iraq, and I saw things that happened to the human body that nobody should ever see, and I came back, and the VA said I had triple PTSD, and I don’t even know what that means, triple, but they gave me a bottle of 600 Oxycontin.’ And it screwed him up, and so he got off and went on to cannabis, and he said, ‘I couldn’t talk to my wife, I couldn’t talk to my children, I couldn’t sleep, and then I used your Black Diamond OG, and I could talk to my wife, and I could talk to my family, and I could sleep.’ And he started to tear up, and he hugged me. I said, ‘I didn’t make this stuff.’ He was, ‘No, but you’re a steward.’

“That was the paradigm shift where I went from ‘this is a money run’ to ‘this is a medical run,” said Belushi. “And every dispensary I’ve gone to after that, I deal with the consumers, and every one of them, including the budtenders, has a beautiful story about the properties of the medicine of cannabis. It filled me with, ‘Oh, this is why I am here. I’m here for the purpose of helping people.’ I mean, as an actor, I simplified my job, which is to make people feel good. You come into the theater and you’re probably arguing with your partner or old lady on the way there, parking, and we didn’t eat. You’re fighting and bickering with each other, and you come to see the show, you laugh together, and you leave, and you both feel good again, and maybe a little kiss in the car on the way home.

“So, my job was to make people feel good, and I feel I’m right on purpose in cannabis, because we’re here to make people feel good, whether it’s feeling good at a concert or because you had 18 broken bones from a car accident or you’re on chemotherapy and you don’t have an appetite. I mean, I know I’m preaching to the choir here and you know all the properties [of the plant], but that’s how I got started and the paradigm shift. Now I have a TV show, and I’m having a ball, and I love this community. I’ve said it before, but I was a bouncer in Chicago when I was a young man, and I never broke up a fight between two potheads. They’re generous people with light, kindness, and it’s a good community to be part of with all you lovely people.” The crowd applauded.

Shepard asked Belushi to talk about some of the challenges he has faced during his cannabis learning curve. “Yeah, I spent a lot of money for this learning curve,” responded Belushi. “My cousin said to me, ‘It’s tuition.’ And I was like, ‘I paid for the master’s program. When am I going to start getting my residency in a hospital?’ I’ve learned a lot. We’ve had problems. I mean, even on the first episode of the show, I had the Captain Jack plants in the room, and I was spraying neem oil on them, and my daughter called. Now, when she calls, everything drops, because I love this little girl more than anything in the world and I lose sight of everything. So, I walked out of the room and left the lights on, which burned all the Captain Jack plants. So yeah, I’ve learned about a lot of things.”

The burnt plants were not the only painful lesson. “We first rebuilt an outdoor grow, and then we did hoop houses, which was really stupid,” he said. “Hoop houses suck. They still have exposure to bugs, and then you get moisture on the ceiling, and then you get mold. So, we tore all that down and built greenhouses, so now we have a much better controlled environment and still have father sun, because the sun is so beautiful, and it makes the plants richer and more natural, and yet we can still control the environment. I mean, we try to keep 1100 lumens on our plants and when the clouds come our lights go up to make sure there’s 1100 lumens, and we have automated controls for the humidity and the heat, and a great fertigation system now that gives a consistency in nutrients. And then we pick everything, we pull them all out, clean them up, and now we have a dual draft system in our veggie room and mother room to keep the air flowing so the microclimate is consistent for the clones. I mean, what else do you want to know?”

Shepard asked if Belushi had any advice to impart for anybody in the beginning stages of their cannabis business. “Get out,” Belushi shot back. “Get the fuck out. Get out, get out, get out, get out! Or sell something to the growers because they’re stupid enough to buy it. Sell, sell, sell, without the 280E tax on your back.” It was funny and people laughed, but neither did he seem to be kidding.

Belushi’s Farm in New England

As pessimistic as that response sounded, Shepard segued immediately into a question about Belushi’s Farm products moving into New England, and Belushi brightened instantly.

“I’m really excited about the Massachusetts market,” he said. “We partnered with Charlie at Local Roots, who’s one of the brightest men in cannabis, and he has a great guy named Vinnie. They’ve been growing some of our seeds – or tissue culture – that we sent. Some of the Oregon strains he’s growing are the Lemon Chiffon Cake, which is really great, also Captain Jack, and then there’s some strains that [we] went down to Colombia and got.

“And this season in the third episode [of Growing Belushi], we go to Big Sur and get Big Sur Holy Weed,” he added. “What a journey that was. It’s an OG strain that it was created in Big Sur in the ‘60s. It was the weed people smoked in Haight Ashbury and at the Monterey Pop Festival, where people were jumping and dancing and playing drums and having fun. It was what was so wonderful about cannabis in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, that really fun community feeling, and then once Nixon put the stamp on everything, everybody hid and then went up in the mountains and started making hybrid strains to grow in the shade. It was much more powerful, and then it was about getting stoned as opposed to getting high and having fun.

“So now we have these massive strains, these combination of things, that will just fuck you up,” he continued. “And by the way, the new consumer doesn’t want to get fucked up. They want to have a really nice experience, and this Big Sur Holy Weed that we’re going to start is perfect. And then I have a strain called Cherry Pie.”

He repeated a “true story” about coming downstairs one night around dinner time. “My wife was at the bottom of the stairs, she said, ‘Jim, are you hungry?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ She goes, ‘You want to go out?’ I go, ‘Sure.’ She goes, ‘What do you have a taste for?’ I said, ‘A cheeseburger?’ ‘It’s a little heavy for me. Anything else?’ I go, ‘Well, how about some sushi?’ ‘I had Sushi with my mom last night. Anything else?”

Pausing for effect, he continued, “‘Why do you even ask me what I want when you know damn well we’re going to go where you want to go, and we’re going to eat what you want to eat?’ And my wife went, ‘Oh my God.’ So, the next day I took a hit off my Cherry Pie, came downstairs, and she goes, ‘Are you hungry? You want to go eat?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ ‘What do you want to eat?’ ‘Baby,’ I said, “we can go to Taco Bell as long as you’re sitting across from me.’ She was like, ‘Wow. You’re cute and charming.’ ‘Am I?’ So, I call my Cherry Pie the marriage counselor.”

Big laughs. “We have all kinds of strains coming here,” he added, “but what I really like is that Vinnie and Charlie have come up with some OG brick hash that’s selling rapidly, and it is very, very good. Also, we have the Blues Brothers ice cream in a few stores. It’s hard because you need refrigeration to transport it, but it’s five milligrams in a little pint, the perfect party favor, and it’s delicious. We’re doing very well in Massachusetts, and I’m very happy with what’s going on with the quality of the products that Charlie is producing. I’m very excited about it.”

Shepard mentioned that most of the NECANN people, including himself, have Maine roots and asked if Belushi’s Farm products are available there. “Yes,” responded Belushi. “East Coast Cannabis. Those guys are great. They say what they mean, and they mean what they say. Very cool. We had a great time up there. We did a little Blues Brothers concert, although Dan didn’t show up and I had to dress my cousin as Elwood. But they really believe in it, and they have the finances to grow. They’re building an unbelievable facility that should be done. Just terrific.”

Growing Belushi

Shepard asked Belushi about the educational purpose behind his reality show. It began, he said, with a seed of an idea that soon took on a life of its own. “When I started the farm, I called my buddy, James Orr,” he said. “He wrote and directed Mr. Destiny, and he was partners with a guy named James Suckling, a wine connoisseur who used to work for Wine Spectator. He’s got his own website about wine and James went to 40 different wineries in Italy and did short documentaries on them. I said, ‘Why don’t you come with me and film some stuff here?’ So, we started filming little things, and when I went to Colombia, I said, ‘Come, bring the camera to Colombia and let’s see what we can get.’

“We put together a five-minute sizzle reel, and I went to all the networks to pitch it as a reality show,” he added. “They were very frightened about it because they all carry FCC licenses and it’s federally illegal, but Discovery took the risk and gave me three episodes. It’s a very difficult show to do because a lot of those Discovery shows are like Moonshiners, which is a big hit for them – guys who appear to be drunk, with car races, and arguing about running cars in parking lots. I mean, it’s crazy shit on that network, so what they wanted and what I wanted to do was far apart. I wanted to make a movie with great context and meaning, something where people will learn, and they wanted to make a Discovery show.”

But it all worked out. ‘They are very cooperative,” he said of the Discovery team, adding of the show, “It’s kind of got three parts. It’s definitely funny, and my cousin Chris and I have a good relationship. Then there is definitely some processing, where they want to learn about how things are done. For instance, we have a section on how we made the brick hash. And then for me, it’s got to have family or a warm feeling of growth. That’s why it’s called Growing Belushi. It’s not just about the growing of cannabis, but the growing of me as a man in relationship to this plant medicine, and I have grown a lot. I’m much easier to get along with.

“But it’s not a stoner show, and people aren’t getting high in it,” he added. “It’s really about the challenges of growing and the challenges of expansion. This season is really about expansion, the different laws of the states, different compliance, different relationships, and making sure there’s quality control. Because I’ve got my brother’s image on it, I’ve got Dan Aykroyd’s image on it, and my name is on it. So, the most important thing to me is that the quality is consistent, people are happy with the cannabis that they’re receiving, and it helps them on whatever journey they’re on. And all I’m trying to do is break even. Break even in this business is a home run. Again, once I met that one guy, it wasn’t about the money anymore, it was about the medicine. Anyway, the show comes out next month, so watch it!”

In response to a question about charity work, Belushi spoke to the high number of people still imprisoned for cannabis. “The plant brings you to a higher sensibility about community and generosity,” he said, “and it’s hard to be in an industry where people are making money and not see the men and women who suffered to get us here. There are still 40,000 people incarcerated for cannabis. So yes, if you make any money in this industry, give it to LPP – Last Prisoner Project – and get these people out. If you can’t spend the money, write letters and emails to your state attorney to get these people free. So, I’m focused on the prisoners, and also on veterans, because these guys are forgotten, loaded up with pills, and the VA is not prescribing cannabis.”

Q&A

Shepard ran a few questions by Belushi that friends had been given to him, including one about his favorite method of consumption. “The brick hash,” said Belushi after a moment’s thought.. “Take a little slice and put it in a pipe with a little Cherry Pie, and your partner, your wife, sounds beautiful. I do a little chocolate, 2.5 milligrams under my tongue at night to sleep. I’ll take one hit off a joint. I’m a micro-dose kind of guy, just to kind of chill the guy that wants to get his own way all the time.”

Shepard also asked Belushi what non-Belushi strains or products he likes. “In Oregon, I would go to Grön. They’re lovely and they make great chocolate. They have a one-to-one-to-one THC, CBD and CBN that really helps me sleep.” Belushi added that he likes the formulations so much that he wants to develop a version for Belushi’s Farm. “80 percent of Americans have trouble sleeping, so one of the medicine routes that I want to go is creating something that’s safe and that assists people in falling off, and I think this one-to-one-to-one is a really good product.”

He also took questions from the audience, including one about the predominance of THC-heavy strains in the market. “Look,” said Belushi, “the Captain Jack strain has like 16 percent THC, and it’s got about 5 percent terpenes, and two thirds of that is myrcene, so at 16 percent, it will put you on the couch if you’re not careful. I really believe in the entourage effect, and again, back in the early ‘60s, we were smoking weed that was 6 percent THC, and you got to smoke the whole joint. So, we all know terpenes are the value. THC is the motor, but the terpenes is the medicine. So, give me full-spectrum anything.”

Belushi also fielded a question from a Massachusetts regulator on consumption lounges, but he had another point to make. “My first thought is to not give away so many cultivation licenses, because it’s killing Colorado, California, and Oregon,” he said. “It’s just compressing the pound, and these farmers are the farmers that were in the hills, the legacy market that converted to the legal market, and they feel like the government has punched them in the face again with over-regulation, over-taxation, over-cultivation, and it’s expanding the black market as opposed to contracting it. So, if there is anything you can do about that.”

Following the keynote, Belushi took to the show floor, where he took photos, signed autographs, and chatted with fans. Overall, NECANN Boston 2023 was well-attended, with a vibe that seemed to reflect a New England cannabis market that remains stubbornly optimistic in the face of serious headwinds that continue to face the  industry.