NuWu Sessions Episode #30 : JASON HARRIS of JEROME BAKER CANNABIS

Welcome to NuWu Sessions, where we invite guests in to enjoy one of our top-shelf table packages in Las Vegas’ original cannabis consumption lounge: The Sky High Lounge. In today’s episode, we are excited to have JASON HARRIS of JEROME BAKER CANNABIS.  Watch as we learn how JBD came to be, all while trying some new JEROME BAKER CANNABIS products. It’s only here on NuWu Sessions, so let’s get into it!

Jason Harris of Jerome Baker Cannabis and NuWu Session Podcast host Tom Nieves.

Thanks for being a part of this. Jason Harris is one of our (NuWu Dispensary) longest partners. We’ve got the exclusive on the Jerome Baker Design new collabs. You can get these here in the Sky High Lounge.

Yeah, you know, it's just in terms of the collab that we’ve done with you guys, it pushed us to a different level. Just being able to produce the quantities that you guys demand and you know the quality that you demand. So we wanted to set ourselves apart over here and offer something cool with the packages that go on and really kind of, you know, address the Las Vegas cannabis thing like it should be. And so I felt like this was a great venue to do that in. And what an awesome turn of events that's happened with this great new cannabis lounge that we’re in.

So for those of you who don’t know, just a quick list of Jason and Jerome Baker design accolades. You’ve won several High Times Cannabis ups. Leafly even announced you as one of the Top Cannabis Glass Blowers that changed the game. [So this man is definitely well known, well respected.]  Now let's get into it. I want to take it back before any of that. And I want to talk about a young Jason and how he was introduced to the plant, man. What was your first time smoking weed (like)?

You know, I feel like I grew up in it. I always kind of wondered to myself what got me into this and why, but I do know that as a young kid, I would try to dry out banana peels and smoke them because I heard it might get me high. And why? I don’t know it must be I was drawn to it in some way i think that humans evolved maybe in a few different chain cycles and some people don’t, you know aren’t drawn to that at all and some people are more, and obviously, I’m one of the ones that were drawn to it from you know an ancestral kind of a way. 

I grew up around it. My brother was a smuggler my whole life back in the day. My father was with him. They would go down to Jamaica on boats and buy pounds of weed and bring them back to Miami. And that's where I'm born and raised, in Miami. And then the 80’s, you know, when I was growing up there, we had an airplane with engines on the wings that we could land on the water down in the Bahamas. My father had an airplane with an engine on top that we can, you know, go fly around and land in the water. And looking back you know and seeing how we are all set, my father has a few different car lots. We had trailers, we had strato trucks that were moving across the United States. What I didn’t know was that I grew up in a family of smugglers and I didn’t know that and when I was doing it and so as I, you know, became you know through you know getting to be an adult kind of can look back and say, “Whoa, this is what's really been going on.” 

So I kind of came up with it and my first time getting high, I honestly can’t remember that. Whether it was like, what it was. But I think that over the course of time, my grandfather helped me develop seedlings in the house when my mom was gone. And we were growing little plants and I couldn't have been in the eighth grade. It was just part of my upbringing I feel and then evolving into what it is today, you know, it became a little more spiritual for me as I got into, you know, high school and realized, you know, that the plant kind of enhances a reality for me. It motivates me.

So kind of coming to that and understanding like what my draw to the plant was, was something I think that happened in high school. 

My freshman year of high school, just being able to kind of understand, okay, this what I’m, you know, I’m smoking. I need to get food, weed and smoke it a certain way and not be janky about it.

But I can remember as a kid going over to my friend's house and you know, his dad looking, rolling a joint for us and getting all the seeds out of it, you know, getting them all down to the button of the magazine and rolling a nice pinner. 

Yeah, the good old school right? And then, you know, sitting there lighting it for us and roasting the entire fucking joint and one good hit and just flick it at us. To me was one of the moments of, okay, you know what I mean? There’s a hierarchy, there's a culture here, there’s more to this. And so, you know, just growing up in it, man, you know, what I mean? It's kind of been my sensory projection. I don’t know how to really describe it. Yeah, but it's been there the whole time. 

Yeah, you know it sounds like something that you know has been with you your whole life. You know what I mean? Familial and things like that so did you like when you started using did you just say like that so did you like when you started using did you just say like pretty much immediately start being a regular like you just I mean because if it’s already around you know it was that kind of a gradual process?

You know I can remember even at one point coming home from school with one of my schoolmates and thinking we found some pot plants, you know, and we took that shit and dried it out in the microwave the best we could and smoked it all and later to find that it's a young maple tree. You know, we’re thinking we’re badass. You know what I mean? You know, I think that, yeah, it's just embedded in there and so yeah that's kind of where that is.

Did you ever have a moment where you found a strain or there was something that really stood out to you in those early years or something that just happened where you fell in love with it?

A thousand percent. So, as I got through high school, figured my scene out, I still didn’t understand terpenes or profiles or this kind of stuff. What gets you higher? Sativa, indica, blah, blah, blah. And so when I went to Amsterdam, probably 1992, I think I went out there and kind of touched it and touched it in a way that was like the northern lights. Okay, and there is it, and I recognize that from fucking Andy Carver selling the packs back in the day, right? Or it might be the haze. It might be some different terpene profiles that turned me on. And then when it was really locked and loaded for me was, you know, when I spent lots of years in Amsterdam. So as, as when I was young and first getting embedded in this, in this kind of culture slash industry as a glass blower, I’d go over there post up blow glass and I’m meeting Robert Cornerll Clar, Jack Harridge, you know, who, all the who’s who, Adam Dunn, his mom, all the people who had the good strains, the gray area, you know, there's a lot of activity, a lot of aggressive cannabis, big dicking going on over there. 

And so for me, being over there in the mix was really turned on, but it was the Katsu Coffee Shop. And that's the one coffee shop that I would go to that I could have all the different haze varieties mixed. I can have a haze NL (Northern Lights), a haze Thai, a haze Afghani, and taste those different profiles. And we didn’t call them terpenes back ten, We had no fucking clue, but I knew those flavors now. And I knew exactly what I’m getting at. And so now when I went back down to Miami and I smoke a crip, I can kind of feel where that's coming from in those, you know, and these are OG terpenes profiles or OG Strains or OG Phenos that are actually there and probably to this day still at the Katsu Coffee Shop and they take pride in that and that's a haze variety. And so that's where I started to click out into what I really enjoy, what really clicked for me and that was out, still to this day.

Yeah, and I think that's kind of the power of legalization, you know. I mean it was similar for me once I started working in the industry. I mean, we all tasted bomb weed, right? And we all know what we like and what we don't like. But until you have a name, you have a haze, a Northern Lights, an OG, those prominent notes that kind of help you differentiate and find what's right for you, right? So how did you start getting into glassblowing? Because you've always loved the plant. But what kind of made you want to go down that road?

You know, I was always into art. Even as a, you know, in high school, I would just hang out in the art class all the time and really respect some of those, you know, high-end artists that were there. You could see them, you know, there might be two of them in your whole high school, right? And, you know, I’d like to hang out with those guys and kind of get juice from that. I’d like to hang out in museums and look at, you know, Rembrandt or George O’Keefe or just really cool stuff. 

And I was at that point in my world, in my later high school years, I was on the east coast near New York City. So I was able to access, you know, the Smithsonian or the MET or the MOMA or just different places where I can experience this like upper level art that showered me there's a way to get there. I could do that. Thats really what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an artist. You know what I mean? That's really where I saw myself as a youth. So growing up, I became activated in a process of art called boutique. Which is a process of painting wax on to fabric, going through a series of dye baths, some cracking happens, it looks really fucking cool and trippy and I could take this shit and put the Grateful Dead on there or put Phish on there and go out on a Grateful Dead tour or Phish tour and make money, come back to school and keep rocking. At the same time, I was into painting and process art in class which is intaglio printing they call it, So it’s a carving on plates, put in resists on there, running them through ink, you know, with ink on them through paper and creative printmaking. That’s what I was really into. And so and through the combination of this, I'm on the Grateful Dead tour, and all the alpha hippies, all the people with the best weed, we’re getting this one pipe from this one guy that was on the Grateful Dead tour making it. He has a little bread bus out there that he was in his bus and he'd go to show, to show with his torch and he's making little pipes out there. And the pipe, when you smoked it, seemed to change color the more you used it.  It has this magical quality to it that I was like, wow, thus us fucking cool. You know what I mean? Everybody had to have that fucking pipe. You know what I mean? And so I found the guy out there on the lot one time and I got a pipe from him, and you know, and it said love across the front of it. 

L-O-V-E you know and it had all these little skulls and all these words unite and stuff in there and I didn’t see that shit until you smoke more our it and you see the skill kind of come out and you’re taking this thing like to the breakfast table looking at it while you’re eating, you know, you just reading into this thing and it was kind of in my soul at this point. So this guy’s name is Bob Snodgrass. He’s like an old wizard. Big beard, you know, I mean fun dude to hang around and to be around. 

So anyway, the Grateful Dead tour happens. I’m doing my boutique artwork and off we go. I’m in college and so I end up in the University of Oregon. And when I did, I remember the old man, Bob Snodgrass, lived out there in Eugene. So I looked him up in the white pages. I got the S-N-O-D-G-R-A-S-S. And I found him. I called him up. And he said, yeah, come over, man. Whatever. I came over to his house. And his house was just outside of town. And it was a little trailer. You know, it smelled like a farm, you know what I mean? It had a donkey next door. His wife actually killed a rabbit that day and made us stew. You know, it was the first time I was over there. And I’m from the East Coast. I see this guy, he’s got hay in his mouth. And he’s blowing glass pipes with his kid in the back of the trailer that they lived in. A guy became enamored that night with him. And in his little living room, there might be 10 people in there with dreadlocks. It smelled like patchouli and body order. Fucking good weed, you know what I mean? And for me, that was the best chronic weed I’ve ever seen. And fucking, you know what I mean? I want to be around these people. So going back to college and making my paint making shit, I’m thinking, well, how can I, you know, learn glass blowing and incorporate it into this art major that I’m in? And I was at that time an art major at the University of Oregon. And so I went over and asked him to show me how to work on glass. Luckily, at that point, I was number 7 in his lineage of teaching people.

There was a couple of other people in his studio and it was a respect thing, it’s like if I could make anything those other guys would get a hold of it right in front of us all and try to peel it apart literally like grab it with their fingers and try to pull the marble off the fucking thing in front of people to make you embarrassed you know? This is the kind of upbringing it was. It was like hardcore and there was no internet then so there wasn’t a place that we could go and be like hey, how do you do or whatever it was?

There was one book out of Denver that we all had access to. There was one little ass torch that we all knew about and no internet. And at that point, in my world, I was like, man, I want to go figure this shit out. So I flew to Germany and I went to the factory that makes the actual raw materials because that’s the town I saw on the side of the box. Mine’s Germany. Well, that must be where the fucking glass is coming from. I’m going to go over there and check it out. So I went over there and spent a couple of weeks there. I ended up in Italy for a few weeks. And then went back to what we call the Pilchuck Glass School. That’s in Washington State and it is the Mecca for all of us glass artists. Once a summer there’s hundreds of masters that come in through the course of a few weeks from all over the world and teach their way of being, human and glassblower and whatever other thing they do.

And there’s a few different mediums in glass up there from casting to flameworking to fusing and blah, blah, blah. So this is kind of my path and how I got to where I am today. I fell into it through an artistic kind of love of being and creating and seeing a bigger world. And then I found the one guy who taught me the thing. And when I learned from him in that time, in those few beginning years, it would be like if I was a painter and I was hanging out with Picasso and Monet and all the other ones were around and we knew that this was something huge going on right here. It’d be like seeing Phish back in like, you know, ‘91 or even let’s say ‘89, you know what I mean? You’re like there and you're seeing the thing and you're like, whoa, okay. There’s definitely something here and this is going to blow. And so we knew that as pipe makers at one point in those early years, I was being flown back to New York. And the big boys back there, the diesel crew, they’d show me the big fucking pillows in the cases and all this shit. And then the green pillow from Mexico, that was all, you know, that was the shit. And they would spend a lot of money. They were paying me 10 bucks a gram for my pipes. They would put it on the scales and we would clear up, I'd go right back in Eugene on the plane, you know what I mean? And try to make bigger pipes. And we only had one little shitty torch that anybody knew about. Again, no internet. This is pre ‘96. So that was the come up.

It was being around them, right time, right pace, and being able to kind of find a way to express myself in art and being able to because selling batkis, I was making whatever a T-Shirt, but I was able to make art and translate it into cash. I’ve always believed 99% of being a good artist is being a good salesperson. You got to get rid of it so you can make more shit that makes your palette of colors bigger. It all costs money. So that was my driving force, like, I can make the pipe?

And then this also taught me a lot about just being centered and being able to like learn about yourself and being able to take pride in something that you’ve done. Like a contractor, I just built this killer house. Look at it. You know, great, good on me. So for me, the pipe was my ability to kind of like be like, hey, this is what I’ve done and this is what I’m proud of. And I did. You know what I mean?

Yeah, that was my way of expression and then that was the propellant that came.

Custom Jerome Baker bongs made for Nuwu Sky High Lounge.

That's a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing. That’s an inspiring story. As an artist and as a creative in general, I think you hit it right on the head. You got to sell yourself, you know what I mean? If you don’t believe in yourself, who's going to? So you know going out there and getting it done. Creating more so that you can get better and just grow accordingly right?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, when you're walking through life, you kind of want to look around and say hey, you know what?

What are we doing, okay, number one, and am I gonna walk like this or am I gonna walk like this? Okay, and who do you look up to? Whoever it might be, Elvis, I don't care, why do they do it the way they do? Like a rockstar, stand up tall, hold your chin up. People wanna be like you then, you sell yourself.

So that's part of all this whole thing is just being protective and being positive. Being able to pivot through things, you know what I mean? Being able to handle the way. Fuck, dude, and artist? Are you fucking kidding me? It’s all critique. Oh, moon, that’s so fucking cool, that piece. Can you make it in pink? You know what I mean? Fuck you, man. So being able to deal with critique in a certain way to not turn the client off either. You know what I mean? Great, fuck yeah, I’ll go make it in pink. Give me the fucking money. You know what I mean?

And so being able to pivot off this stuff and all that stuff, that's all being an artist. And I think that's one of the hardest parts about it. You know, people are called and we’ll go to art school and do the thing. Well, great, like set up your first show, You know what I mean? When that happens, you know you sell a piece, you know what I mean. And all this stuff, it becomes like, you know, challenging. For me, you know, it's the same thing. It's, you know, trying to make something. You know, I’ll never be happy with that fucking painting. You know what I mean? And do you know everybody else said, it's done. There you go. 

Beautiful message, appreciate you sharing that. Let’s move to the set where we start smoking some weed. I mean, my boy Jason’s been here, like smoking the whole time. But now we’re going to introduce one of our packages. We are sipping on some canna drinks. Jason has the new Sunrise.

These are great drinks. We brought the family here a couple weeks ago for the Super Bowl. Cousins, brothers, mothers, fathers, the whole thing. We have them all around the table and everybody’s ordering drinks. It was a lot of fun and it's really cool because it's non-alcoholic. You know we don’t gotta wonder when Auntie is gonna get out of control. So yeah, we can just keep it flowing man. We can double her up.

Now, let’s smoke. How do you want to get started here today? 

I’d like to do a bong hit and tell you how to smoke out of a Jerome Baker bong.

So, first of all, we’re gonna use this great Jealousy chronic that we’re growing outside of Reno with White Cloud. White Cloud Botanicals has a really high tech grow. Super chronic indoor and they’re able to kind of really work in the plants. So I’m super stoked to work with them and create this unique packaging.

This was a nitrogen filled can. So when we pop it out, we can get fresh weed down here in Nevada. It's very difficult to keep your weed, you know, soft here from what I’ve experienced. 

So I’m just going to take the chronic here and just break it up. I don’t use a grinder. I actually don't use grinders myself. It's not my thing. I think that there are certain ones that might destroy the resin or make it amos what I call a teeny taste in my mouth. So I was to take, for example, tobacco and I grind it up to taste different than my long cut tobacco.

So now we have pulverizers. I’ve found that the Wak-It grinder works pretty well. I got a Wak-It at home. It does not grind, it pulverizes. So again, if you go down to a microscopic level and all of a sudden I’m an ant and I'm looking at the pave resin, I think that the resin will be destroyed in the grinder. And I think that we want to try to keep a nice puffy resin ball.

It’d be like to me like a piece of styrofoam that might have gotten a little shriveled from water, And that might do something like that. This is my theory. So this is just the way I taste it. So I pack a little tiny tiny bit of chronic in here. And so number one, used to smoke a graphic bong. That's what I grew up on in college and stuff. It’s a straight tube. It’s an acrylic bong with a soup can on the bottom of it. It had a little butterfly metal bowl on the thing and you’d pack a little bit of weed in there because it was so fucking expensive and rare to get the chronic weed you. You put a little in there and then you’d roast it and snap it through okay, then you would pull the bowl and hit this is the hit that's gonna help you see God, okay? We’re not just smoking to do, we’re actually just launching. 

So you know some people all roll up. They'll pack a big old bowl and pass it around and stuff. If that's what you get yeah whatever, get lit from a certain thing. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. There is a small amount of weed in there. 

There you go. The one and done, huh? The snappers, that's the approach? 

Snappers.

So we just heard about how you kind of got into glass blowing. But now I want to talk about the early days of Jerome Baker Designs. So how did that start? And how did you decide you wanted to start building that brand?

The early days of Jerome Baker Designs, it's like for me, it was I had a torch. I make pipes and I figured out that I can take the torch on the road, stick it in a hotel bathroom and make a bunch of pipes one night and go wherever the fuck I was the next day and sell them for cash.

You know, one of my big sticks was, if I had a parking lot full of people at a concert, I can go there and I have a gun case, okay? It has foam on both sides. So I could put all the little pipes in the foam. I could close the gun case and I’m rolling. I got my gun case with me, right? Simple. So I got out of the parking lot and I could take one of my pipes, toss it into the air, and let it hit the rucking cement and bounce across the cement. At that point, everybody’s looking at me. Of course Okay and you could pick the thing up and say it didn’t break, see? I got people rolling over and paying cash. And I could stack it up. There you go, That's where I started. Just figuring out that I can go. I have my little song and dance. I knew my pipe wasn’t going to break when it hit the ground. You had your sales pitch dialed in, right? And I can make some money.And so over time, that became Grateful Dead.  And when I was selling in the parking lot of the Grateful Dead, I met a guy with Light and Stage Design, LSD. He told me that he would give me a backstage pass every time I gave him a pipe. And I tell this story a lot and I cannot fucking remember this guy’s name. But he also worked with Michael Jackson, I remember. If you're out there, you remember me, dog? But reality is he traded me a pipe, and so every night I would just go up there and make a bunch of pipe.

I'd run down there in the morning and get a link up with him, give him my best work from the day before. And I would get that pass. And that pass for me was not only my entrance to the show, it was my opportunity to get from row with nobody between Jerry and I. So it became like my little thing. Like I would have to get down there at some point and hang on as long as you could. And I know how hard it was for me to do all this. There's a lot of work involved. And then you can get the pass and then wait it out and then finally get your spot up there. Not easy, and you gotta push and shove. And all the same people were up there every night whether we’re in Tampa, Memphis, Sacramento, Chicago, Cincinnati, you’re elbowing the same fucking people up there. Like, what the fuck, they have the same addiction  I did. How these are old ladies. These are young kids on this side. I don't know how they're even going to these different cities. And it was that kind of vibe. And when people ask, well, what was it? It would be like if you were religious or spiritual and you'd go to church and you look around and everybody in the church is, you know how you’ve seen those videos where they're all crying and shaking and all that different stuff going on. That's what's happening. And then the thing stops and they're like, okay, see you in Cincinnati tomorrow. You know what I mean? And that was the vibe. So growing up in that and pushing through that. And then finally, at some point, Jerry dies. And this is in, I think, ‘95. And at that point I was going, I had already started a little business in Humboldt County. I had a little warehouse going. It was called New School Glass. And then when Jerry died, we made it a corporation. We called it Jerome Baker, named after Jerry Garcia, his first name is Jerome. Where then Baker’s is getting baked designs got me to a lot of discounts and different leads into different places. So it was Jerome Baker Designs. And I've hired a bunch of my friends that were all kind of like, What are we gonna do? There's no Grateful Dead tour now. I said, well fucking, we’re in Eugene. I rented a big building. I had a 10,00 square foot building on one side, a 15 on the other side. We had 70 employees when it was all up and running. And doing 4 plus million a year in sales. This is in around ‘99 now at that point. So we built it quickly. We were the only game in town for a little while.

So that led us to instant stardom with this thing. We had all the different bands that were playing on the road and would all stop through Eugene and get pieces. We were getting orders for people like George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Drew Berrymore, and all these different people were getting pieces and it was hot.

Luke Walton, when he was in college, they came by the shop. It just goes on and on and on. So it was really fun to be part of all that. And then you know, looking back on it I look back and say wow what a fucking time that was you know? And even during that time I would have meetings with our crew of all the people and you know we would do raw rallies and rah rah and this is a thing, we’re paying taxes and everything. And that was a big deal, man. You know that was the big deal for the 90’s is to have a bong manufacturing studio. Have 70 employees and everything legal beagle on the books. It was pretty incredible.

Jason Harris’ Jerome Baker Dream Shop located in the Arts District in Downtown Las Vegas.

So now we’re gonna fast forward to 2003, right? You were arrested in a sting operation known as Operation Pipe Dream, which was specifically targeting businesses selling drug paraphernalia. ( For note: The operation cost taxpayers $12 million in resources and over 2,000 law enforcement officers). What was that day like?

So, I'm in bed. I hear a knock on the door upstairs. Never a good sign. And I’m thinking, who the fuck is that?

But I’ll back up for a minute here. About a month before all this, I was, you know, doing my shit one day on the phones. I actually called my bank to get a, like some sort of financial thing done for a piece of equipment I was buying, And so they said everything’s great. And they, and my banker, who's a friend of mine says, “Okay, we can do this. But we still have to get this court case thing dealt with. 

And I was like, court case thing? And so he says, yeah, like we had some investigators calling up the other day and he's like, wait a minute. He's like, I'm not supposed to tell you about this, but there's something going on. You're being investigated. I'm like, shit. So I called the lawyer and tried to do it. And it's like chasing a rabbit down a hole. You don’t know who the fuck’s investigating you? So, later I noticed people following me with Nevada plates. You know, just different weird shit was going on in my world. People going through garbage that were not hobos.

So looking back, that's in retrospect. For all you to learn from my mistakes. So looking back at all that. But then the day that it happened, I’m asleep in bed. I hear the pounding on the door upstairs. I go up to answer the door. And there's literally so many people in front of my house. And the sun was just coming up. And there's so many people in front of my house that the front cop, his whole body was, I had glass doors, his whole body pressed against the door where he's being pushed from behind, like you can’t move no more. And there’s so many fucking people out there they had half a track in my driveway. That that old mash fucking unit thing. At the same time they were at my house, they were at all my businesses and my CEO’s house. I didn’t know it. But when they came in, they started, you know, they made a big table like this in my living room. They had their own table, chairs, the whole thing. They took their jackets off. There was DEA, ATF, Secret Service and Postal Service at my house. 

Everybody’s sitting around you know, it's like, you know, hours for the first moment was me getting hogtied hands behind my back to my legs. And I'm out of bed, man. Fresh out of bed. It couldn't have been 6 am, you’re waking up to this. And my dogs. They are threatening to shoot my dogs. See this kind of thing. So after a while I’m laying on my floor. I’m looking down at I-5, the main highway going through Oregon. And I saw all the cars were still driving and I'm thinking the world is still going. You know, that was the thought going through my head. The world is still going, you know what I mean? But it seemed for me like a dead stop, it was really fucking weird. And so, you know, they get me all sat down after a few hours. Now it's getting a little more personal. Like I might know a couple first names. You know what I mean? They're trying to be my friend and shit but they are raiding my house. And so they wanted to know, they said, tell us about this paraphernalia. This is at my house. And I said, this is artwork, bro. They're holding a piece that had all these beautiful horses on it and shit sculpted on it. I’m like, this is a fucking piece of art. I didn't really know the veracity of it. And so at the end of it all sure, I'm in the cop car, back to the jail cell Eugene Jail. And I’m in the cell. There was a couple of other people in theorem you know, it smelled like piss, it’s fucking blue, it’s like wow I’m in the fucking system. Like, you know, it’s like back in the fucking cafeteria at school kind of vibe, you know what I mean? Like what the fuck? And so im looking at the TV, it’s behind chicken wire because you can’t touch it, you know, they don’t want you fucking with it. And on the TV comes John Ashcroft and he’s behind the podium, and he’s at the fucking White House, and it’s like a breaking news shit, you know what I mean? It's like, we got him. We got 55 of the most notorious paraphernalia dealers today and they sold pipes that look like this and he's holding up a lipstick thing. It looks like a lipstick container but it's a pipe. And he’s like, they’re trying to trick us. 

You know, this is what his vibe was. They’re trying to trick us. And later on, he went onto bust all that, slap-em-up porn. That was the next thing. They also put the blanket on the Lady of Justice at the Justice Department during that time because they didn’t want to show her tits. So you’re talking like real ultra conservative right-wing nuts.

That's the wise of it. I’m sure there's more to it, right? Okay, and the more that i discovered later on was somebody sent a bong to one of these governor’s kids. They got the fucking credit card charged it. He got away with it, and has the bong. Well, how'd you get it?I got it from the website. So, the governor says, “Hey go get him. Sting him out.”

That was the beginning of all this money spending in this time. So that's how I felt that morning. That's what happened to me that day. I was arrested. I was in the federal system. I had to deal with it for many years. A lot of bad happened with it, but more good has come out of it just in terms of where I'm at today. Of course, I could have more money if I didn’t get arrested then.

But now it’s kind of like who’s really in this fucking thing?

You know, I was at the first Champs Show. I had 8 booths at the first Champ Show and I closed them all off so nobody could see my shit unless you were a customer because I didn’t want them out of the motherfuckers taking my fucking ideas. Of course, right?

So, you know, it's come a long way. There’s not a lot of the same people out here on Thai fucking street. You know what I mean? And so I always tell everybody, hey whoever’s still out here if I'm out there for 30 years, I'm doing something good. I'm passionate about it. I’m not ripping everybody off. I’m trying to give my soul to the fucking cannabis and why I have no clue. I’m having fun. I like making art. So that's the juice there. I think that we all need to understand, you know, right here we have a media voice. You have a voice out there. You guys have a lot of great fans, a lot of great listeners that watch this program. I saw you guys had tons of people watching the last interview that we did, and you've done so many cool ones down here. And this Sky Lounge and NuWu have given us the ability to buy these killer lights and have all this crew and be able to slap it and make it real. Let's use it, okay? And let’s make sure that what we’re preaching here is that everybody understands, there's some questions going on right now Number one is, who's our leader in this cannabis movement? Who’s gonna lead us to victory right now? When this thing started, there was one man down in San Francisco, in the Castro and he had a house down there that everybody went to. And more than that, most of them, I would tell you, had HIV and AIDs. And he figured out that this plant healed them.

Not get rid of the disease, but it made their life quality so much better and so it became a medical necessity or these people straight up just to fucking eat so they’ve translated that in the cannabis industry. This guy's name is Dennis Peron and he started Prop 215. This was the original cannabis legalization endeavor. 

Dennis has since passed and he was that leader for us. He got the fucking thing legalized with that, I couldn’t believe it at that point. That's something that we’re lacking right now. Our leaders are right now paid shrimp change to sit down in DC and sit on the corner waiting for somebody to come from lunch so he can grab their ear across the fucking crosswalk and talk to them about this. There they go. And he's gonna stand on the other side. So, we got to be really aware here, what's going on? Know what I mean? And we also have to be really aware that what they arrested me for the law hasn't changed. Zero change in that law. They could come arrest me today for manufacturing, you know? And I hate to say it, but they can come arrest us right now for selling this shit here. This is selling drug paraphernalia. Well let's be clear, a drug kingpin has more than a thousand plants. A drug kingpin, they've been talking about possibly executing, you know what I mean? This has been talking about the past eight years.

Let's be clear that this is illegal on a federal level and it hasn't been changed yet. And because of that, they still have the power to slap a hippie. And so which you know, I’m not scared. I’m just aware of it. Let’s be clear about that. If they, you know, I don’t know, you know this was designated in the Supreme Court as this is only used for marijuana. 

Yeah, it’s not art. It’s drug paraphernalia. That’s the verbiage, right?

Mmhm. Let's also be clear I was arrested for manufacturing drug paraphernalia. But one mile, two miles down the street here, I have a permit to manufacture drug paraphernalia, written out on my city license.

Wow. Yeah, that must have been a full circle moment.

Yeah. Now when I got that License, you’re not allowed to get that license as a felon. Detective whatever his name is, called me up and said, “You know, you’re a felon, but we want to give you this license to manufacture drug paraphernalia. But your felony is for manufacturing drug paraphernalia.” He’s like, “I’m going to make an exception on this one and give it to you.”

Now, I would go so far as to say, I probably got the only license in the city of Las Vegas to manufacture drug paraphernalia . so it's really wild for me getting that license was like a big hurrah. I was able to, you know, talk, tell my parents, you know, hey, look I finally got it right. But still, it's unnerving that the feds could come in and smack me down at any time. 

That's a good point, because you’re right. We are still fighting this fight. Even so, we are right now in Nevada’s first cannabis lounge. We’re still doing this. It is still federally illegal. And at the end of the day, as you said, they can still come in and slap a hippie. 

If we look at different models in history, we can look at, for example, alcohol. They have outlawed it in whatever year. And then it took 13 years by the time they “re-legalized” it for all the states to catch on.

We started this and I know for sure in 1996. I had a medical cannabis license in Oregon. And I think it was around those years that we started doing medical cannabis, I may have been in Alaska, I don't remember the exact things here. But in that zone till now, we’ve had a long hard flight and we started out with this medical, not veil, but medical breakthrough that allowed people to see that, oh, wow, we’re going to get hungry if we smoke weed, you know, when we’re on chemo. Cool. Let's do it. You know what I mean? Then they started to figure out they’re going to, you know, there are RSO’s and different things like this where it gets a little more intense with healing properties. So I think that, you know, it's just going to take another second. Our prediction for the past, you know, three to four years has been 2026, National Legalization. It’s hard to tell them no and what's going to happen. We know both of these. Presidents that were and have been in power and neither one of them really gave it a kick so I’m not sure what's gonna happen now. That's why, in my opinion, we do need a leader. Like an aggressive leader, you know? Somebody who's gonna get in their face and really question what the fuk is everybody thinking here? Cut the shit. Legalize it for the thing. Cut the over taxation and over regulation. God, are you fucking kidding me with all this fucking packaging? Excessive plastic going out. It’s one time use vapes. Come on man. Is it sustainable or not? I mean straight up, you know when I was a kid there were times I threw garbage out the car window too. 

But now I’ve learned, that does not sustain itself. And so, we have to look at that as humans. Especially as the cannabis people we’re supposed to be the ones woke. You know? Forget the name work. We’re the cannabis people. We know better. You know I mean over packaging, over taxation, over regulating, all this stuff. We can’t let them do that to us.

I wish to stand up. That's my perspective on this.  

It will happen. It will happen. It's like naturally, I mean, you’re smoking weed, you’re working in a great place, you’re around these beautiful people, you must believe in the light. 

You must believe in the light, even just to be part of this society and community and stuff like that. So we have to just project it and just keep supporting it’s growth. Because something will come out of this and some leader will come out of this that’ll pop this into the thing. It could be whatever that weirdo president is going to be next. Who knows? But he could say, whoop, whoop, you know? And then all of a sudden, he's the guy who did this and it's going to change the world. There’s a lot of wild stuff going on right now. War, famine, this, that, so now what's the other side of that? You can’t just sit here and focus on CNN or Fox TV all day. You’re gonna get focused on the negative and start to fall into the on. Where’s the other side of that? Well, it's cannabis. It’s healing properties. Can you imagine if cannabis was legal in Russia? Would we have a different world right now? 

Yeah, why? Because it creates a free-thinking thing. It just pushes a bit more of a free-thinking question, you know, you're question to society, it's a, you know, there’s gotta be something more to this. And so I believe in my heart that this cannabis plant and this legalization process we’re going through is a part of a bigger picture of a healing the world picture of this is what’s going to help people actually calm the fuck down. You know what I mean? Motivate. Take it right? It’s not for everyone. I’m not saying the world needs to go smoke weed. I’m just saying for legalization purposes to let the people be free. And the people are going to be free and use free thinking to direct our whole course right now. 

So would you say that that message you just said is what kind of push you to actually start the Jerome Baker Cannabis line and kind of break into the actual legal cannabis market?

You know look, in one sense with a reason that has to do with that yes, but the real reason why is because I’m so back connected with people like the sour D group Crew or people like that are old-school people that were in this from the beginning that have genetics. So for me, partnering with different vertically integrated processors and dispensaries and grows in different parts of the country. So it’s my, the first V1 is to the network. And V2 is introducing genetics. And those genetics now, we’re started a tissue culture lab that we have, I don't even know, X amount right now in the tissue lab. And we’re doing some breeding, we’re having some special stuff made. That really kind of brings out like what this whole path that I’ve just told you about, I can explain that in cannabis. And so that alone is what we’re working on doing. And it's to create common terpene profiles that can go across the nation. So you can go to Miami and buy, go to Morton’s in Miami and buy the same petite filet that I’m gonna get out here in Vegas. It's gonna taste the same. Same with cannabis. For me, it's about having genetics that I can place into these partner processors to start growing for us that have the terpene profile that is like whoa on this thing has the wow factor. And so, you know, that's where I'm gonna go out in some of my favorite strains. And some of the stuff that I’ve seen throughout my travels around the world that have been, you know, some of the best stuff that I have so that's why we did cannabis. It’s definitely not to make money. That's for sure. So we want to have that product out there and that goes with our class. So for me, it's about being like hey, um you know that friend who has a killer grow in New York. We want to do some, um, some growing out there and put out packaging on there. That gets us into the dispensary. And then we can highlight that cannabis with our glass. The glass on the way in the door is a talking point. People can say, “Hey, what’s that?” That's your own big glass. It goes over here with the cannabis. They go together. Whether it's the dabs, the cannabis, the tips for the joints. Whatever it is.

All that’s part of the culture. It’s all to get you high. To help you see God.

As an artist and as someone who’s clearly very artistic and as someone who’s clearly very artistic and forward thinking in that regard, let’s talk about the artwork and the packaging. What were you guys trying to achieve with the packaging and the look you guys are going for?

So yeah, you know, I really enjoy making people think. Making people question things and so for me putting some of the packaging together has been a lot of fun because we’re able to highlight different markets that we’re in this particular packaging for Las Vegas was to create some of vintage, sexy vibe that obviously doesn't appeal to children and has cool coloring and stuff on it. So we wanted something fun. This was a great start for us, And we’ve just now kind of started to revamp our packaging we’re going match/match across the board with California. 

So you’re going to see some new stuff coming out. And we work specifically on this new stuff with this incredible artist out of New York, Trice. And he’s like the mayor of this little section of Brooklyn. All his artwork all over the buildings. And so we work with a lot of different street artists and then kind of couple things together and then put it on this packaging to get the masses. And I think that for us, it’s like an expression of whatever’s in that particular strain on these packages here in Nevada. And then overall, my kind of ground floor, my mission when I look at what we're all about when we’re doing art for Jerome Baker? So I base it a lot on the reefer madness propaganda that went on in the 20’s. And so I have a huge collection of all the different assets of Reefer Madness. 

We pick and pull from that and we might take it, we might say,” Hey, man. Reefer Madness meets 1960’s goofy.” Or Reefer Madness Meets Snuffleaficus. I don’t fucking know. It depends where we’re at and what we’re doing and we throw a lot of shit on the table. I have banks and banks of artwork in Dropbox and so then we will just create until the cows come home. 

And then we will have all this stuff that I could choose and pick from and this stuff. And we kind of do a lot of that. And it's about feeling when we’re at it the same way when we do the bongs, when we’re out sculpting and blowing the bongs all day. If the current events are of war and negativity, we’re going to put some bombshells on that shit. We’re going to put some weird gore and cut them up. You know what I mean? If it’s floating rainbows and daisies, we’re going to be putting that on there for that day,

So we kind of like flow with the vibe and there's so much to look at. So much to choose from you know and that again check out jeromebaker.com. It’s got a big story on there about who we are, what we are. I have a lot of different videos on YouTube. I got a channel on YouTube that has these expressions of creation. So I created a real beautiful bong. For me, looking over here, I see the giant orange one and the giant green one. And those pieces remind me of that time I had with that team when we made that special creation. It’s a lot different from the viewpoint of a fan or a client coming up to look at the piece that's this beautiful green bong. It shines like this, So for me, It’s about creation and capturing that creation and putting it on YouTube has been really important for me because the piece of glass that we made is gone, sold. It might have broken. They never took a picture of it, whatever it was. It’s gone, but that moment’s forever, right?

But the moment’s forever. And if I don’t capture it, then it’s only in my mind’s eye. 

Let’s talk about the team you’ve got working for you with Jerome Baker Designs. How has that process been for you?

Yeah, well, I feel like for us, we have the best team in Nevada. I have Kat, who’s the sales head on the cannabis side of it. And she just knows so much about the plant. Has a lot of respect for it and then also knows so much about the Las Vegas industry here and the people that matter and how to capture the sales. How to make sure we have sales through.

And now you know developing different new genetics that are going to go into these cans.

We talked a little bit about the long term plan of trying to go multi-state. What other long-term plans do you have for Jerome Baker, the cannabis line, the bong line? What else do you see coming down the pipeline?

So, you know, the big thing that we’re at least working on right now is making art. And so it’s about leveling up, doing some different projects. The biggest project that I’m working on right now is we’re working on a chandelier. We’re going to bring a team of people over to Marano, Italy where we’re gonna work with ancient masters of glass blowing and we’re gonna create some really beautiful large scale chandeliers. And we’re gonna take that piece and of course we’re gonna sell it, but we’re also gonna make it in the metaverse. And so people can have an opportunity to kind of experience it in a different way. Whether it be they come with us to Italy and sit on the sideline and watch us make this while they drink wine and eat the best fucking pasta in the world on a small little island just off the coast of Venice called Murano.

And knowing that Murano, again, that's our Mecca. It’s where the greatest masters of glassblowing in the world are. Some are multi-generational and they’ve been out there to keep the secrets there. So we’ll go over there and work with those guys. We’ll bring a team of people with us. We'll also bring some collectors and people that are involved in the investment of this thing. 

So we’re really excited about that. We’re also doing a new project where we’re working on a movie right now. And so that’s pretty Incredible. And that’s a pretty cool way to tell this story and tell it in a way that is magical. 

And it’ll live forever, right?

It’ll live forever, yeah. 

And the biggest thing right now we have going on is we have the Las Vegas Dream Factory. It's right up the street from here and we create it everyday there. There's always new projects, always people stopping by with whatever crazy story they have about they have about they want to get their bong. 

We had somebody show up the other day. A guy and his kid. And he was wanting to buy his kid his bong for his 18th birthday. So it just goes and goes and goes. So it’s like, I don't know, it just goes a long way, man. There’s so much going on all the time and things are always moving and flowing. The biggest project we have coming up in the near future is this Grateful Dead residency. That's going to be in Las Vegas for 3 months. We have 20 something shows going on so to honor that, we’re probably gonna do something down here at NuWu.

We do all the official Grateful Dead glass. We do the licensing for that and we’ve had a great run for the past few months with us and just super excited about that. And that's going to be presented here. And we should have a good time with this, man.

If there is a young glass blower watching this podcast who wants to go down a similar path, what would be your advice for the next generation?

I would definitely say, you gotta do it. You got to try it. And then you can always be like, I didn’t like it. I’m going to try something else. There's no harm in that. There's more harm in not trying it. You’re fucked. And so if you really want to do it, what I would recommend doing the easiest path to glory for you is going to be looking up glass blowing in your area. One word. Find out who's doing it in your area and then go visit them. Go sit at their shop. And I always tell everyone to sweep the floor. Wipe some things down when you're in there. Make it look like you really like this. Janitor is first, glassblower second. So get in there and show them that you really, wow this is cool. And then if you're cleaning up, doing something, you're going to be able to learn a little bit and find out your next point of light from there. 

Surround yourself with the people who are doing what you want to do, right?

Yeah, it's a respectable thing. And this is ancient art. And there's a way to get involved in it that's the right way. There's many ways to do it. There's one right way, you get in on the ground floor. 

Beautiful message, man. Jason, thank you for your time. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Let people know where they can find you.

 You can find us at jeromebaker.com. And just know that that particular web address was confiscated by the federal government from me, and later on in life, I was able to get it on an auction for $700. So jeromebaker.com. Check out the website for sure. And check us out on Instagram, @jerome_baker. I do a lot of work on Insta Daily just to let you see what's actually going on there. This is like so cool, the lifestyle and the whole thing that's come with blowing the glass bongs for people.