While American peddlers covered all conceivable iterations of cannabinoid vaporization, the most bizarre invention I saw in San Bernadino was Aktiv8vapor — a commercially packaged e-cig loaded not with tobacco or weed, but with New Zealand Deer Antler Extract.

Mark Jacob, an avid ultra-marathon runner and the founder of the company, says that athletes and hunters have been consuming naturally discarded antlers for thousands of years to increase stamina. "They were nature’s purest statement of regeneration!" Jacob states on the company’s overproduced website. Vaporized deer antler, it turns out, tastes about like you’d expect — mostly mossy, kind of woodsy, and just a little bit gamey, with a mentholated aftertaste at the back of the throat.

"Oh, and you’re not supposed to inhale," the girl said after I was three puffs in, "just sort of let it sit on your tongue." Whoops! Maybe I did it wrong, or maybe I was already too high to tell what was happening, but I couldn’t discern any skeletomuscular enhancements after hitting the antler. It did make me feel like I was in the future a little bit, though, but the kind of future that created the wasteoid aliens at the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars. Apparently they sell this shit at GNC for $15 a stick now. LOL @ athletes!

After two hours at the Medical Cannabis Cup I was fed up because I hadn’t actually smoked any weed yet! So I turned my nose to the stinkiest breeze I could smell and ended up at the Exoticgenetix booth. Like most of the best things in life, I had no idea how their booth concept would actually financially sustain itself. Exoticgenetix is a seed distributor and prides itself on developing high-intensity strains with high-intensity names like Exotic Fighter, Black Hawk Down, and After Life OG. A dozen different smoking mechanisms, including a comically huge stem bowl and a three-foot bong, were laid out among just as many jars of fat nugs. The hoodied budtenders were eager to please: "Hello friend. Can I pack you a bowl of Blue Angel?" Yes you can!

My sample size was more than generous, and after I took a preliminary toke I blew the haze in his face and smiled, handing the pipe back. "I mean, you probably wanna finish that to get the full effect." So I cleared the bowl, getting so bombed in the process that I really didn’t want to try any more. But the Exoticgenetix representative was insistent that I move onto another full bowl of Purple Pig. How on god’s green earth was I supposed to differentiate between strain effects when I was already in a different dimension? The strangest part of the whole ordeal was the fact that Exoticgenetix wasn’t actually selling anything to consumers: they’re a strictly wholesale business. All those free samples were either a serious attempt to generate widespread consumer demand, or a powerfully simple statement of weed-sharing culture.