The future is now, baby, and that means weed apps. Yes, thanks to advances in stoner sciences, you can now scroll your way through lists of dispensaries, popular strains, and local singles who also smoke weed, all while taking a dump.
The most popular weed app out there is Seattle-based Leafly, and for good reason. It’s kind of like the weed versions of Yelp!, Wikipedia, and Amazon all in one. The app includes the encyclopedic range of information its namesake website is famous for, with myriad articles covering every tiny detail of cannabis usage. But its most valuable contributions are its extensive profiles for literally hundreds of strains—you can search for cannabis by name, effect, or flavor, find local dispensaries that carry your favs, and read and write reviews. They even have a tab for checking happy hours and daily deals from participating Washington dispensaries.
The free app Releaf deserves every bit of the positive reviews it gets from medical patients, but honestly I think everyone should use it. Releaf assists you in tracking your usage–the ailments you hope to treat, the equipment you use, the dispensaries you buy from. It’s intended to be used in real time to track your moment-to-moment experience of being high; then graphs and charts form over multiple sessions to demonstrate what really works for you. Releaf includes a pretty thorough profile page for sources, so you will never again find yourself staring at the last of your “miracle supply” and wonder where it came from, how long have you had it, etc.
This app is especially awesome for people who feel they are affected by weed differently than most people are, and want to track what strain does what.
MassRoots is the Instagram of weed, and it’s awesome. Create a profile and cruise through thousands of photos and videos of beautiful nugs and glassware from all over the planet, with the added bonus of being able to parse your feed by location or interest. Go make a profile and indulge in some #weedporn.
MJ is a sleek app designed to bring you news and reviews in a streamlined package. Think of it as Twitter for stoners—up-to-the-minute legal, cultural, and political stories from cannabis news sources from around the world as well as reviews and stories from users.
For folks trying their hand at growing or seasoned veterans who want to digitize their process, GrowBuddy is a great app for tracking methods, progress, and any changes or experimentation you may try. Anonymous and encrypted, it’s intended to help you whether you are growing two plants or 3,000. weGrow is an app for the first-time grower, or the person who’s hit a ceiling in their results. It tracks your metrics and gives you suggestions based on what you’re doing and what results you’re getting, coaching you every step of the way.
Another category of apps is all about the hookup. None of these weed-meetup apps stand out, but after looking through some, I do have a simple criticism to level against them all: Most are way too heteronormative, and they all seemed biased toward a binary-gendered worldview. Which is crazy, cause y’all know there are plenty of queer stoners and stoned queers out here.
stashbox@seattleweekly.com
