New State-Backed Project Will Create A Community History Of California’s Stewardship Of Marijuana Genetics

Organizers and researchers behind an ambitious effort to record California’s unique history in the development of cannabis genetics explained details of the state-funded project last week, laying out plans to conduct wide-ranging interviews, collect plant samples and establish a marijuana herbarium in partnership with legacy cannabis communities in urban and rural areas across the state.

Leaders spoke during a webinar last Friday about the initiative, titled “Legacy Cannabis Genetics: People and Their Plants, a Community-Driven Study.”

“This team is comprised of researchers, academics, community-oriented folks [and] scientists,” said Khalil Ferguson, president and CEO of United CORE Alliance, which advocates for communities adversely affected by the drug war, “and we were awarded $2.7 million for the next two years to conduct a legacy genetics oral history and really just tell a comprehensive history of legacy genetics here in California.”

Two main questions guide the project, said Genine Coleman, executive director of Origins Council, a group that represents rural cannabis growers: First, when and where in the state were communities formed around the stewardship of cannabis genetics, including breeding and cultivation? And second, when and where did California connect with other parts of the world in terms of developing plant genetics?

“The objectives we’re really striving for,” Coleman, the project’s co-principal investigator, explained, “are to establish community-driven plant cultivar definitions and documentation through herbaria and to protect cannabis plant diversity and ensure that cultivation communities are acknowledged for their breeding work and can leverage these resources for their own agricultural futures.”

The approach is a partnership between research scientists and community members in what organizers described as a community-based participatory research project, pairing local knowledge and with experienced investigators and historians.

Goals include documenting legacy California cannabis plant diversity, understanding how genetics are distributed across geography and communities and better codification of types of cannabis known variously as strains, cultivars or varietals.

“We’re excited for this research project,” Coleman said, noting that a project website is expected to launch shortly, likely later this month. “We anticipate it will really support farmers that are petitioning for appellations as the California Department of Food and Agriculture stands up their cannabis appellations program, which will be the first in the world.”

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The project is currently working to assemble a community advisory board, Coleman said, which is meant to consist of people with expertise specific to California’s legacy cannabis industry. As 2025 begins, she added, the group is expecting to begin hosting regional workshops with partner organizations “to support experiential learning and enable collaborative data collection.”

Todd Holmes, another co-principal investigator on the project and a historian at UC Berkeley Bancroft Library’s Oral History Center, said he’s planning to conduct about 100 hours of oral history interviews with subjects nominated by and selected with the help of community members. Interviews will be recorded, archived and transcribed, he said, with transcripts eventually made available to the public.

“When done, all of these interviews will create the California Cannabis Oral History Collection at UC Berkeley,” Holmes said. “It’ll be the first of its kind, and it will actually finally place California cannabis into the historical record.”

Co-principal investigator Eleanor Kuntz, who co-founded Canndor, which bills itself as the world’s first cannabis herbarium—a scientific collection of dried plants—explained that the project’s creation of an herbarium around California’s cannabis history is intended to ensure clear communication and allow future researchers to reference tangible specimens of cannabis varietals and cultivars.

Critics have noted for years that retail cannabis strain labeling can be misleading. (Not to mention, calling them “strains” at all is imprecise.)

The most interesting part of the work in Kuntz’s eyes is the opportunity to eventually begin mapping the genetic diversity across communities and geographic regions, she said. “It’s a very interesting question that has implications for policy and also preservation strategies.”

The project’s principal investigator is Dominic Corva, a sociology professor and leader of the cannabis studies department at California State University Polytechnic University in Humboldt.

“When it comes to cannabis,” Corva said on the webinar, “we have a deep historical record of cannabis places around the world, starting with Central Asia. Many of you could probably come up with a number of places that might come to mind: Amsterdam, Barcelona, various parts of Africa, Latin America and South Asia—India, for example, Bangladesh.”

“This is a deep historical dive that intends to place, essentially, California as a legacy weed place in a world historical context,” Corva continued, adding: “If we’re throwing around the term ‘legacy,’ we have to respect what has come before and other people around the world.”

In response to questions later in the webinar, Corva said he wants the project to create opportunities for “hopefully every place being able to tell its story” in the annals of cannabis history.

Kuntz, overseeing the cannabis herbarium, was asked by an audience member about how the project compared to efforts by the company Phylos Bioscience to create a cannabis genome library. She claimed that whereas Phylos put genetics first and employed “bad labeling” that risked causing further confusion over strain names, the goal of the current project is to create a repository of reference material with historical provenance that can help people going forward untangle the stories of various cultivars and how they’ve moved through California.

“As a botanist, in any kind of ID situation, you must start with the appropriate reference material,” she said.

Combining the scientific evidence with oral histories, Kuntz noted, helps paint a richer picture of California’s relationship with the cannabis plant.

“What I as a little science nerd think is the most beautiful thing about this project,” she said, “is you have the constellation of histories tracing how plants have moved between communities, and then you can overlay the science. It’s kind of a bullshit detector, right?”

Looking ahead, the project will be hosting a series of webinars over the next few months:

Thursday, Nov. 21. Research Track: Ethnography & Political Geography. Dr. Dominic Corva will discuss the scope and role of ethnographic interviews in the project.

Friday, Dec. 6. Research Methodology: Community Based Participatory Research. Discussion of CBPR and its use in the study, as well as the project’s culturally sensitive community outreach, education, and engagement plan. Presentation led by Dr. Plumb, Dr. Holmes, Genine Coleman and Khalil Ferguson.

Friday, Dec. 20. Research Track: Oral Histories. Dr. Holmes will talk about the 100 hours of oral history interviews to be conducted in the study and their use and role in the research.

Friday, Jan. 17. Research Track: Herbarium Science & Plant Genetics. Dr. Kuntz and partners at LeafWorks will discuss the role of cannabis genetics and herbarium science in the study.

Friday, Jan. 31 Research Track: Intellectual Property & Public Policy. Genine Coleman will talk about how the project will contribute to harnessing genetic resources and the potential intellectual property and policy implications.

Work on the genetics project started in 2022, when the state Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) put out a call for proposals that “identify and preserve the history, value and diversity of California legacy cannabis cultivars and the rich experience of its legacy cultivation community, and enable, enhance and guide the understanding and application of cannabis genetics to the greater body of research and science-based public policy development,” according to an earlier presentation about the project.

DCC put a $2.7 million toward the initiative, which is set to conclude in late 2026. That money was part of $20 million in state marijuana research funding awarded by DCC last year, using revenue generated by cannabis taxes.

Meanwhile in California, a report released last month by a panel of experts convened by the state’s Department of Public Health made a number of major policy recommendations that would radically alter the landscape of the state’s marijuana market, advising the state consider limiting THC potency of cannabis flower and concentrates, requiring products be sold in plain packaging and setting up a government-run cannabis monopoly along the lines of how stores work in Quebec, Canada.

The new recommendations come in a report from the High Potency Cannabis Think Tank, which consists of scientists and public health experts tapped by CDPH “to provide analysis of the problem of increasing potency of cannabis and cannabis products and to formulate regulations to address it.”

Other recommendations include taxing marijuana based on THC potency and more strictly limiting advertising that might appeal to children.

Authors of that reported noted that recent emergency regulations from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) could help address the issue of unregulated hemp products.

Announced in September, the new hemp rules outlaw intoxicating products and those with any “detectable amount of total THC.”

An industry effort to halt enforcement of the new regulations banning fell short, with a state judge denying a request for a temporary restraining order. The suit says the rules are based on a faulty declaration of “emergency” and come after officials failed to effectively implement hemp regulation legislation that was enacted in 2021.

Separately, Newsom recently signed a bill to legalize cannabis cafes in the state—just a day after vetoing a separate proposal to allow small marijuana growers to sell their products directly to consumers at state-organized farmers markets.

He also signed a series of modest reform proposals, including one to make it so medical marijuana donated to low-income patients is tax-exempt and another measure to prevent what advocates call the “double taxation” of marijuana by restricting the ability of local governments to calculate their cannabis levies after state taxes are already applied.

While the governor supports cannabis legalization, he’s been notably reserved about various drug policy proposals in recent years, for example vetoing legislation to legalize psychedelics and allow safe consumption sites for illegal drugs, in addition to nixing the farmers market proposal.

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Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.