The pioneers in legal weed never can get over the unique pleasure of smoking weed in front of a cop. It’s mind blowing. Today we have sales at pot shops and hundred-dollar ounces and thirty different kinds of edibles and hash pre rolls and cannabis serums I take at 3:30 in the morning when I can’t get back to sleep. Pot drinks and lubes, oils and dabs, the variety of cannabis is dizzying, extraordinary – and that’s not even getting into CBD, CBN and all the molecules we’re splicing to improve people’s lives.
It’s a week before October 17, the day prohibition ended, and a good time to express our gratitude at how far we’ve come. Arrests for cannabis, especially amongst minorities, the unfairly targeted group who suffered most at the hands of an unfair judicial system, are way down, and joint by joint, we’re removing the stigma behind weed.
Canada is exporting weed—good weed—all over the world, and even the most dedicated old school stoner has to admit that legal cannabis is now excellent. And affordable. So while the business case behind cannabis has been disastrous, billions of dollars lost in the market behind overzealous valuations, that’s a separate story from the bigger story: we legalized weed in Canada and it was so harmless that, during the pandemic, cannabis was deemed an essential service.
We’ve come a long way to a place in which KIND can invite thousands of people to our Winter Fair next month and smoke a joint, legally, with thousands of new friends (cop your tickets here ). KIND wouldn’t even exist if not for legalization, and, as the magazine’s editor, on a personal level, it’s been a great joy of my life making this magazine for you.
So, on October 17, let’s all raise a joint in celebration of what we’ve built, together, in this country. A place where we can smoke a joint in front of a copper, make a magazine with Lenny Kravitz a page away from a hash ad, and continue to build and fix and enjoy a system that’s still better than any other legal cannabis system anywhere else in the world.
Happy 10.17, everybody. May your spirits be high.
– Ben Kaplan, Editor in Chief
