Under the general heading of “What Were They Thinking?” I offer you Purple Haze, Acapulco Gold and Rasta. No, not pot. That would at least make some sense, as they are names familiar to many of my generation for various kinds of marijuana. No, these are actually the names of pot-flavored lollipops apparently being offered for sale in some convenience stores in this country.
Now before I go any further with this, let me indulge in a little full disclosure. I’ve smoked pot. Many times. And to all of you out there looking shocked and acting so self-righteous, I can only say this. If all the people of my generation who deny ever smoking pot actually didn’t smoke pot, then who the heck were all those other people in the room with me?
Now, back to the subject at hand. According to a recent article in the June 22 Anchorage Daily News, “The confections are legal, because they are made with hemp oil, a common ingredient in health food, beauty supplies and other household products. The oil imparts marijuana’s grassy taste but not the high”.
There are so many things wrong with this concept that I don’t know where to start. But l will.
No one, not even someone with overwhelming munchies, has ever been heard to say, “Oh, lets eat pot. I love the flavor.” Because, to be bluntly honest, pot tastes just like what it is, grass. And there is a reason that humans do not graze in fields. It’s because grass tastes gross.
How do I know this, you ask? Well, I used to bake brownies with pot in them. This was back in the day when pot was cheap enough to use that way. We brought the brownies to concerts and dances and thought we were way cool and fooling everyone around us as we ate the brownies and giggled uncontrollably.
But here’s the reality – the brownies made me gag. The fudge part wasn’t bad. But I had to basically gag and swallow to get it down because pot tastes like dirty grass and that will never be one of my favorite flavors. No amount of chocolate from the brownies could disguise that taste.
Here’s another reality. After you eat pot, you tend to want to throw it right back up. It takes some stamina, a strong stomach and an even stronger anti-gag reflex to keep it down. And I know I’m not the only one who reacted that way.
So I’ve got to figure that the company making these lollipops either didn’t do any marketing research on flavor preferences or was upfront about the fact that their target audience was not going to be all that interested in good flavor. In fact, aside from some adults who will buy it as a novelty gift to remind their friend on his or her 50th birthday of times past, the only people these treats are really going to appeal to are kids. After all, it doesn’t take a marketing genius to know that kids, not adults, are the main lollipop audience.
Yep, kids. Kids who think that sucking a pot pop will make them look cool. They maybe got the message about smoking cigarettes and so that no longer registers on the cool meter. But a pot pop? For the teenybopper who can’t score a lid yet, here’s a way to still be the baddest kid on the block.
The manufacturers say that they discourage sales to kids and advise merchants to not sell to someone under 18. Right. Let’s put these things next to the check out counter at a convenience store with a register manned by someone who is probably barely 18 and see what happens. You’d have to have been smoking the real thing to believe that it would never be sold to someone under 18. Especially since the slogan for Chronic Candy that makes these pops is, “Every lick is like taking a hit.”
I realize these lollipops are legal. I also realize that many, many hemp products are good products that are actually earth friendly substitutes for chemicals that harm our world and us. But pot pops don’t fall into that category. Pop pots fall into the same category as dealers who hang around middle schools.
On the other hand, if these lollipops taste anywhere near as nasty as the pot I once ate, it might turn out to be a great deterrent to kids who might want to try pot. After all, they may think, nothing that tastes that nasty can actually be fun.
Hmmm… could this actually be a new front in the war on drugs?