Take a puff, it’s springtime

At some point in the next year or so, I’m sure I’ll make a purchase at one of the new Massachusetts marijuana emporiums. There’s one in Leicester, the town just outside of Worcester where my parents are buried. Maybe I’ll stop in next time I’m planting sun-patiens on their graves, or scraping lichen off of their gravestone. That will be springtime, so perhaps the traffic will have died down. Or I’ll drop by the by-appointment-only shop in Salem, which is where one of my sisters lives. (Heads up, Trixie!)

I can’t remember the last time I smoked pot. It’s probably in the 30-40 year range. I will not dime the family member whose home I lit up at, but it’s also the same place where I had my last hashish brownie. And I can roughly place that event, as I was driving my rust-bucket Honda Civic, which I bought in 1985 (used) and which dropped dead in 1988.

I was never all that much of a smoker, certainly not anyone’s idea of a “head,” but I did smoke occasionally from college on.

At first, I bought cigarettes, emptied out the tobacco, and stuffed it with grass. Then I learned to roll my own, and bought my Zig Zag papers at George’s Folly in Brookline.

A friend of mine dated a Berklee College of Music student who worked as a night clerk in a nearby motel, and I remember heading over and buying an occasional dime bag from Rick. (What I most remembered about this guy was that, when Ozzie Nelson stayed at his motel, he asked Ozzie what his job/profession was supposed to be on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” The answer? Retired bandleader. Nice work if you can get it…)

My first job after business school held a weekly “Friday Party” – beer, wine, salty junk food, sugary junk food, and, well, grass. Then there was some kind of a clampdown, and if you wanted to smoke, you had to go into a conference room and close the door. Until pot-smoking was relegated to a conference room, I would take a puff or two from a passed joint. Once it was happenin’ away from the main party, I no longer participated.

When I smoked, I enjoyed the pot mellow, the slight high. I was never out of it, never out of control, but I liked the mild buzz, the goofiness, the munchies. (You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten frozen Sara Lee brownies. Because, in those pre-microwave days, who could wait for those frozen brownies to thaw?)

But then – all of a sudden or gradually, I don’t really know – no one I knew smoked anymore. Everyone drank, but light up a J? It just didn’t happen.

Anyway, it’s not exactly a bucket list item, but more than likely I’ll buy a bit of marijuana at some point in the next year or so. Out of curiosity. For old time's sake.

In any case, I want to make my purchase before the “large multinational corporations” enter the marketplace.

Who’s jumping in?

Atria, which owns the Marlboro brand, just bought a Canadian cannabis company. Constellation (Corona and other beer brands) bought a large stake in another Canadian MJ company, and Molson/Coors has joined forces with yet another Canadian cannabis outfit. (Why Canada? Pot is legal throughout the country.)

Other companies, including Coca-Cola, are keeping an eye on things, waiting and seeing until marijuana is legalized throughout the U.S., not just in a few states. Seems pretty natural for a company whose initial product contained cocaine. Just saying.

Anyway, big biz is on its way to becoming big buzz.

“There’s always been the expectation that big business was going to come in; we’ve been hearing rumors about ‘Marlboro Greens’ for decades now,” said Bethany Gomez, director of research at Brightfield Group, a cannabis market research group. “Now we’re past the point of no return.”

But while large-scale investments suggest that the mainstream acceptance of marijuana has reached a significant tipping point, longtime cannabis advocates are worried that the idealistic entrepreneurs who made this moment possible may get left behind.(Source: NY Times)

My guess is that “the idealistic entrepreneurs” will survive, but they’ll be like the indie bookstore, the one-off ice cream shop. Some people will patronize them, but the big guys will dominate.

Observers think that Atria will have a leg up. After all, they’ve been in the cigarette business and know how to manufacture, market, and distribute products that get smoked.

All this has got me thinking about the iconic cigarette ads that were a staple of my childhood.

I personally wouldn’t walk a mile for a Camel, but “I’d walk a mile for a Camel” was their tagline for a while.

Who doesn’t know what LSMFT stands for? (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco, silly.)

The Benson & Hedges theme song (an instrumental) became a radio hit. ]

For the ladies: MS. Magazine. Betty Friedan and The Feminist Mystique. Bella Abzug’s hats. And our very own cigarette, Virginia Slims, with its tagline, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby.”

Salem smokers? They were urged to “take a puff, it’s springtime.”

And I remember entertaining the babysitter by racing into the den wearing winter PJs, racing out, and racing back in with summer PJs, yammering “Switch from hots to Kools.” (The babysitter, and her girlfriends who were hanging with her, were entertained…)

Not to mention the Marlboro Man, riding his horse off into Marlboro Country, to the theme music from The Magnificent Seven.

Although the ads were often excellent, I’m just as happy that there are no TV ads for cigarettes – there haven’t been for decades. But I really would have like to have seen what the folks that gave us Marlboro Country and “Take a puff, it’s springtime” would have done with ads for marijuana.

Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.