Medical Marijuana Zone

For those on the hunt for top-shelf fire, you have arrived at your destination. Founded in 1996 and located in the revitalized Arts District in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, The Cure Company runs a two-story, seed-to-sale facility.

Part dispensary, part grow operation, the upstairs is a fully-functioning, eight-room cultivation hub. Downstairs, customers can browse through The Cure Company’s top-shelf cannabis phenos and other leading industry brands in the dispensary below—aptly named the City Compassionate Caregivers, or CCC.

The brand is notorious for providing expertly cultivated and highly sought-after cultivars, which are also sold in other dispensaries and brands stretching across the state of California. The Cure Company is also acclaimed for collaborating with some of the most iconic celebrities in weed culture—including Snoop Dogg and Nipsey Hussle, to name a few.

“When I was learning how to cultivate there was no Instagram. There were no forums telling you how to do it. All there was, was a hippie in the mountains with a barrel full of cash buried under some dirt saying, ‘I did it like that* or ‘I did it like this.’”

The Chronic

The company offers everything from dank, fruit-forward hybrids like Sweet Thang (Cherry Pie x Do-Si-Dos) and GA Gelato (Gelato x Legend Orange Apricot) to indicas with private lineages like Marathon OG—with the late Nipsey Hussle’s exclusive endorsement. You’ll also find refined sativas like Mimosa (Purple Punch x Clementine) and the classic Lemon Haze (Silver Haze x Lemon Skunk) to burn with your morning coffee. Other incredible strains include indica-leaning hybrids like Monster Cookies, Heat Wave, King Louie, Papaya Punch, Tire Fire and King Stash. With a selection like this, The Cure Company has got you cured, so to speak.

These aren’t just names either. The strains bring forth an artistic identity created by The Cure Company, too. Each individually packaged premium strain has its own carefully designed box that describes its name with unique art. Sweet Thang touts seductive, hot-pink lips with bud sitting gently between the teeth, while Papaya Punch exhibits an explosive, juicy green papaya that’s just oozing with flavor.

The Humble Beginning

Behind every leading brand is work, dedication and know-how.

The odds are good—unless you’re a cannabis industry insider—that you’ve never heard of Patrick, The Cure Company’s founder. But, if you’ve smoked medical marijuana in California in the past 15 years, you’ve likely enjoyed his product at some point.

Or maybe he sold you an eighth out of his car in Los Angeles in the ’90s, long before dispensaries were a thing.

Like many successful LA-based brands, The Cure Company doesn’t lack the culture that it’s been earning over decades. According to Patrick, it was the hustle of the early days that helped The Cure Company become the large-scale producer of premium cannabis that it is today.

Like many in the scene, before he founded The Cure Company, he was slanging the best chronic from the trunk of his car to people from all walks of life.

“Because I had been on my own since a young age, I

knew so many people from so many environments and everyone knew me, and I got along with them all and that was my life,” he said. “I was living the life. I was the man. I loved it. I always had a fat wad of money in my pocket.”

And then a funny thing happened: It all became legal.

“I’m like, ‘Holy shit! I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.’”

That was when he walked into his first medical marijuana dispensary, in 2005. He’d been selling weed in the grey market for years, but here, people were just walking in and choosing from dozens of different strains. The store even advertised on the radio.

After opening dispensaries in the downtown LA area, he was naturally led to cultivation. Let’s face it—there’s no better way to ensure you have the best buds, unless you do it yourself.

When in Doubt, Grow Your Own

Before The Cure Company was the massive vertically integrated company that it is today, a key component in ensuring consistent buds was by Patrick and his team to learn expert cultivation. When it was time to start cultivating, at first it was something Patrick hadn’t done much of, at least not successfully.

“When I was learning how to cultivate there was no Instagram. There were no forums telling you how to do

it. All there was, was a hippie in the mountains with a barrel full of cash buried under some dirt saying, ‘I did it like that’ or ‘I did it like this.’”

The learning curve was a steep one, three or four years of subpar harvests he had to sell anyway because of the money and time investment.

“I perfected it. It took me a long time to get beyond that curve. It almost broke me, but I stood persistent. I kept working hard. I got a lot of advice from the best people out there and was able to innovate, learn, make good friends,” he said.

The hard work paid off, to say the least. Now consumers know that The Cure Company delivers nothing but the best strains, consistently, every time, without fail.

The Cure Company’s seed hunters have found some of the best strains, such as Marathon OG, the brand’s signature product. It was the result of a partnership with the late Nipsey Hussle, a hip-hop artist who died in 2019. Vouched for by Hussle as a “pure OG,” it’s exactly what the LA crowd knows and loves, growing up smoking those old-school OG strains for days.

Marathon OG is also a strain that was given to Patrick by “an old-school hippie” 15 years ago. Says The Cure Company website, “This is aheavy-hitting indica strain that’s great for boosting mood, relieving pain, and encouraging rest in the most seasoned of smokers.”

Nowadays, The Cure Company brand is all about the strains, brands and hashtags. The company currently owns grow operations with a combined 2,000 lights in California alone. Patrick manages 300 employees, plus another 500 in the other brands, dispensaries and products he owns or co-owns. He estimates he cultivates at least 35 brands of cannabis for other companies as well.

Patrick also has plans for cultivation facilities in Nevada and Massachusetts and a “master plan” for growing in 10 states. “Our goal is to continue growing the highest-grade cannabis and be able to reach out across the country so other people won’t have to come to California to get our flower.”

From there the dream gets even bigger. “When I finish that model, I’m going to hand the boat over and open three large cultivation facilities, one of the East Coast, one for the West Coast and one for the Midwest. My goal is to be one of the final three or four guys who end up on top, one of the last privately-owned cannabis businesses, grown organically with family.”

Because he started in the industry early, he’s well-positioned to compete with the corporate money now flowing into cannabis. Not all will be so lucky, he said.

Still, he’s come a long way from slinging baggies out of his trunk in downtown LA. “It sucks because it’s not nearly as fun. Life was fun. There was a lot less stress,” he says. “Now with taxation being as high as it is…The little guy can’t make enough money to expand his business and the guys with the big money are going to come in and they don’t need (return on investment) as fast as the little guy.”

For more information, visit thecurecompany.com.

Read this story originally published in High Times September 2021 Issue in our archive.

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