The Austin Chronic – New to the Texas Medical Market: RSO and Delicious Chocolate Products: Texas Original Expands with Full-Spectrum Edibles – Chronicles

Valentine’s Day proved to be a perfect opportunity for several Austin medical dispensaries to offer new dishes combining cannabis and chocolate – to which I say: lower your bow, Cupid; I don’t need convincing to eat chocolate that gets me high.

In the modern world of edibles, it’s easy to sleep on cocoa confections. After all, for most of us over 30, our first experience with THC consumption was probably the ubiquitous “pot brownie” – an earthy-tasting chocolate baked product with inaccurate dosing (instead of milligrams, we simply described them as “high” or “low”). Since then, fast-acting, low-calorie gummies and candies have dominated about three-quarters of the nearly $10 billion-a-year U.S. edibles market, which also includes a growing beverage component. But chewing a candy bar or sipping a THC-laced seltzer doesn’t quite feel like indulging in the same tantalizing way as biting into a decadent piece of chocolate.

As a patient of Texas’ Compassionate Use program, I purchased several new chocolate products this month. Among them, Texas Original’s first medical cannabis chocolate product: Belgian Dark Chocolate Bites. The jar, which costs $70, includes 20 hexagon-shaped chocolates, each containing 10 mg of THC. The dispensary employee noted that it took about 45 minutes to feel the effect, so I ate two at a friend’s birthday party in anticipation of an anxiety-free night’s sleep for a few hours later.

I judge the taste and presentation of edibles by the standard of “would I be satisfied if this was a random non-cannabis snack I impulsively bought at Trader Joe’s”, and the Belgian dark chocolate bites They succeeded. Their texture is very solid, as dark chocolate is firmer than milk chocolate, so there is an initial crunch before softening with a rich depth of flavor. I was starting to feel pretty elated as I sang karaoke at the party – a passionate version of Meat Loaf’s “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” if you must know – and, at When I got home, I got a body high so pronounced that I remember saying to my cat, “I’m Really notice how my skin feels right now.

After two hexagon shaped chocolates, I was restful and relaxed and slept like a baby. I actually slept better than a baby, because our real baby woke me up at 5:20 in the morning.

But above all I was restful and relaxed and I slept like a baby. I actually slept better than a baby, because our real baby woke me up at 5:20 in the morning. That’s when I noticed that seven and a half hours after consumption, I still felt great. I guess it’s because edibles with high fat content, although they take longer to reach you, also have a longer-term effect.

The only thing I regret about this experience was eating a bunch of assorted chocolates from a heart-shaped box left over from V-Day. I guess eating chocolate that gets you high doesn’t stop you from wanting to eat chocolate while you’re high.

The most intriguing aspect of Texas Original Chocolates is that they are the first product in the Texas medical market to use RSO. Unlike many three-letter acronyms in the cannabis space, RSO is not a dizzying combination of prefixes and suffixes discernible only to organic chemists, like Resinonia-Smokeadosious-Oxidank or something. It clearly means “Rick Simpson Oil”.

If you’re unfamiliar: Rick Simpson is the rare person who discovered a potential medical breakthrough and didn’t try to monetize it. Instead, he freely taught others how to make it and distributed the oils until Canadian authorities eventually raided and seized his home.

An engineer by training, Simpson suffered a head injury in 1997 while working in a hospital, which left him with debilitating tinnitus and dizziness. When prescription medications proved ineffective, he had better results with cannabis. Years later, when he developed skin cancer, Simpson made a concentrated cannabis oil that he applied to his lesions, and he claimed it cured his cancer. This led him to become both an activist and a Johnny Appleseed-like figure for an oil recipe that uses specific solvents and techniques to preserve the whole plant profile of marijuana with all the cannabinoids, terpenes , flavonoids, chlorophyll and compounds.

Most edibles, tinctures, and vape cartridges use distillate, the process of which removes virtually everything except the intended high-potency cannabinoid. Meanwhile, full-spectrum RSO is praised for its theoretical “entourage effect,” in which plant compounds are believed to work together to increase the health benefits of THC.

Texas Original Marketing Director Francesca Neely-Dickey says one of the most common requests from patients is for natural, plant-based products.

“They want something strain-specific, they want something full-spectrum and they want something as natural as possible,” she says, noting that RSO oil is made from the Blue Dream plants that Texas Original grows at its Manchaca factory.

Along with chocolate bites, Texas Original also recently began providing patients with RSO tincture, an extract that users can administer under the tongue using a dropper. Neely-Dickey expects more RSO products to become available as the dispensary continues to evolve its menu.

Although its anti-cancer benefits are largely anecdotal and lacking clinical trial data, RSO remains a popular cancer treatment – ​​which is one of the eligibility requirements of Texas’ medical cannabis program. But Neely-Dickey points out that there are other patient needs that make RSO a good addition to their product line.

“Unlike distillate, which only contains purified cannabinoids, RSO gives you a more balanced and slightly less intense high,” she says. “For some of our patients who are sensitive to THC, the distillate may be too strong for them. RSO is more of a product that mimics the effects of smoked flower, so it is truly beneficial for these patients.