Meet The Disruptors: Joe Tierney Of Gentleman Toker On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

True negative disruption pursues profit for profit’s sake and denies the human dignity and intelligence of its customer. I’m talking about loot boxes! They put loot boxes in my video games! Used to be a time when you could take pride in all the cool weapons, characters, and skins you collected playing the game. You know how much they want to unlock Sindel in the new Mortal Kombat? Like $5! For each extra character! For a game I already paid $60 for! Introducing pay-to-win mechanics degrades the experience, while hooking a generation of school-age kids on gambling is obviously a flawless idea that couldn’t possibly have a negative impact.

As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Joe Tierney.

Joe Tierney, Founder and Editor-In-Chief of Gentlemantoker.com, is a cannabis connoisseur with a mission to help Washingtonians navigate the marijuana industry in DC and beyond. He began his own MMJ journey to medicate his PTSD, anxiety, depression and manage his pain.

As the Gentleman Toker, a moniker he took to describe himself equal parts professional and pothead, as well as a connoisseur of quality, he began to publish humorous and insightful reviews of the unlicensed brands that sprang up to take advantage of the “gifting” loophole in the District’s legislation. Today, six years after launching his site, GentlemanToker.com, Tierney is a go-to source for Washingtonians seeking advice on where and how to obtain the best marijuana the city has to offer.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

The first act of recreational cannabis legalization, in Colorado, struck my psyche like lightning. The idea of change, real change, happening in my lifetime became a galvanizing force. I wanted, more than I’d ever wanted anything before, to be a part of it and help guide it. I tried to get a job in the industry, I was even willing to move across the country for half my salary at the time, but it didn’t work out.

Then legalization came to me. Initiative 71 passed in Washington DC, just a few miles from where I lived in Northern Virginia, so I packed up and moved back to the city. I learned that DC already had a medical marijuana program, so I became a patient ASAP. Since I had already traveled to licensed recreational shops out West, I could tell right off the bat that there were some serious issues with the products and prices at these DC medical dispensaries at the time. Then the first I71 vendors started to appear with better products at better prices than I could get at the dispensary.

I tried pointing these issues out on the dispensary’s page, but they took my reviews down. So I started GentlemanToker.com to create a space where I was free to discuss both medical and recreational brands without having to worry about being censored. The fact that it took off as much as it did was a nice surprise. I thought I’d be old, surrounded by feral cats and stacks of newspapers, before anyone started paying attention to what I was saying.

Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?

Legal cannabis is a disruptive industry by definition. We’re up-ending 50 years of federal prohibition one fiefdom at a time. We’re challenging the propaganda we’ve been fed to fuel the War on Drugs and the notion of what and who a marijuana user is. We’re actively harming the bottom lines of for-profit prisons and Big Pharma. If the government wasn’t so stingy with licenses and offered one to anybody that could prove they meet the requirements- y’know, like how almost every other industry works- we’d be looking at a new path to the middle and upper classes. That’s what I’ve seen happen in Washington DC, a city that legalized cannabis without any regulation. Instead, most state licenses are tightly controlled and very limited, granted almost exclusively to affluent white applicants. These license limits stifle competition and thus, do not serve patients, consumers, or the grander goals of social equity. I wouldn’t mind disrupting that, too.

My main focus, however, is to encourage the public to think critically about the cannabis in their bowl and the industry as a whole. There’s a lot of excitement around the idea of so many different strains, for example, but what is really important is how well it was grown. We make an effort to educate people on what factors make desirable or defective cannabis in our reviews.

Even pointing out that there are any issues with the cannabis industry is a controversial stance. People still want to believe that everything around legal weed is bright, sunny, and a force for good, like some sword-wielding hero riding a unicorn, liberating villagers as it dashes about the nation. I hate to be a buzzkill, but there are some serious issues that need to be addressed if we’re going to have a thriving industry of safe, high-quality cannabis products at fair prices. If I can help enough consumers become market-savvy, then when this aggregate votes with their wallets, a better cannabis industry will naturally result.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I unintentionally drove prices up for concentrated cannabis products when I first started writing in DC. Concentrate can boast THC of 60% or more, whereas flower, which is what you’d typically think of as “marijuana,” caps out around 30%. Shatter was one of the earliest forms of this new-wave hash and it went for $40/gram here back in early 2016. When word got out that the medical dispensaries were selling sub-par products at twice that price, all the street guys raised their prices to $60/g for decent quality shatters and budders over the course of a month. That set the stage for $80 brand-name and $100–120 designer hash at pop-up events in the years to come. My bad, everybody.

What’s most interesting is what didn’t happen. The dispensaries didn’t lower their prices to try to compete with the unregulated I71 vendors (they, in turn, blame the cultivator for the pricing). Dispensary quality in this product class didn’t improve for years, and when it did, it was spurred by a newly-licensed cultivator with experience out West joining the DC medical market and raising the bar of competition, not by me complaining to anyone that’d listen that my drugs were too expensive. What I learned then was just how crippling a system by which the government, not the consumer, decides the winners would be to market innovation, pricing, or even keeping up with best practices. Watching as state after state in the Midwest and along the East Coast passes this exact kind of legislation has been a source of continual frustration.

We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?

The now-defunct Cannabist’s reviews from the early days of legal weed taught me neat tricks like checking to see if the stem cracks and the bud springs back. Danny Danko, of course, is the original weed reviewer, so reading his work has been very insightful. Good Chemistry, a licensed dispensary and cultivator in Colorado, published their incredibly helpful STATS Guide to judging cannabis that I found early on. Those few pages both confirmed some of my own ideas about cannabis quality and expanded on them. This was my most important resource early on, the one I could point to prove I knew what I was talking about. Since then, I’ve continued their work and developed my own consumer-focused grading scale for cannabis based on my experiences here at home and traveling to legalized states across the US. And before I started GentlemanToker.com, I was blessed with good bosses that led by example and taught me to do the same.

In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?

Even positive disruption will have negative consequences. Ride-shares are my favorite example. Maybe New York City had its taxi industry working well before smartphones, but trying to get a cab in or around Washington DC was nearly impossible before Uber and Lyft showed up. The price is transparent. If there are any issues with the driver, I can record it on my phone and upload it to TikTok later (kidding).

With all the positives that ride-shares have brought, they’ve also created serious, oft-reported issues. Innovation will always outpace regulations, therefore responsibility must fall on the innovator to consider the potential consequences and implement solutions. Uber should have had a stricter screening process for drivers when it started because the inherent danger involved with having a stranger drive you home is clearly apparent. The Keurig cup inventor disrupted the electric coffee-maker industry, but has since renounced his work for its harm to the environment. And that’s starting with what we assume were fair, entrepreneurial aspirations to improve people’s lives.

True negative disruption pursues profit for profit’s sake and denies the human dignity and intelligence of its customer. I’m talking about loot boxes! They put loot boxes in my video games! Used to be a time when you could take pride in all the cool weapons, characters, and skins you collected playing the game. You know how much they want to unlock Sindel in the new Mortal Kombat? Like $5! For each extra character! For a game I already paid $60 for! Introducing pay-to-win mechanics degrades the experience, while hooking a generation of school-age kids on gambling is obviously a flawless idea that couldn’t possibly have a negative impact.

Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.

My dad made a strong case to learn a trade instead of racking up student loan debt to attend college, and going into the print industry taught me a number of skills and good work habits that helped me succeed working for myself. I’m not sure if ranting about weed on the internet is technically a trade, but I’m sure he’d have a laugh about it.

My old boss at the print shop once advised me to get the best out of negative situations. Most people, even if they’re upset, will relax if you take the time to empathize and listen.

My mother taught me, not by her words, but how she lived her life to be strong in the face of adversity, to never stop growing, and to keep your principles even when no one is watching. Her spirit is my compass.

We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?

This year I’ve been traveling to newly-legalized states like New York and New Jersey to help guide folks to where they can find great cannabis now, before the dispensaries even open. We’re also developing this content into a podcast that we’re very excited about!

Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?

My single biggest influence is the late Sir Terry Pratchett of Discworld fame. He was big on getting across that “we’ve always done it that way” is a very, very poor reason to do anything. More than that, Sir Terry managed a particularly amazing feat. His characters, his fictional characters, continually inspire me to be the best person I can be. I doubt I’d be alone in that statement amongst his many fans.

Robert Brockway and Seanbaby of Golden-Age Cracked.com both heavily influenced my style, too. Love those guys.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Second chances are few and far between, and the results are usually inferior to getting it right the first go around. Life happens in real time. You don’t always get a chance to prepare. The things we say and do when the pressure is on are who we are.

I took up the mantle of the Gentleman Toker when I saw the opportunity, unwilling to wait for a more favorable season, and I stand behind the decisions I’ve made steering this unexpected ship through uncharted seas the last five years.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

State-legal sales and possession is not the end of our fight! There are still people doing time behind bars for cannabis offenses. There are still people whose records for cannabis offenses are hurting their opportunities for employment and housing. Veterans still can’t be recommended medical cannabis despite the promise it’s showing treating PTSD, while 22 former service members commit suicide every single day in this country. Cannabis use, even with a medical card, can be used against you in family court. And federal employees are fearful of even trying CBD in case the THC content exceeds that listed on the package, putting them in risk of a failed drug test and career derailment.

Cannabis legalization on the federal level will remedy many issues, but we cannot stop until we are as equal in the eyes of the law as every other American citizen.

How can our readers follow you online (website / social handles)?

Read my blog at Gentlemantoker.com or follow me on Instagram @gentleman.toker or Twitter @gentleman_toker.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!