Celebrity Cannabis Brands Are Bullsh*t

The smell of 4/20 is in the air, and big Hollywood stars would like you to buy your weed from them instead of the local activist brands who made legal cannabis possible. Seth Rogen has taken a break from buddy movies with sexual predator James Franco, so he can sell you luxury $60 eighths. Jay-Z clearly thinks he does not have enough money, so he would also like to crowd out the smaller, local cannabis labels with his own marijuana marketed to the wealthy. ($50 joints!)  Even Martha Fucking Stewart and Gwyneth Goddamned Paltrow are coming out with CBD bath bombs or infused kombucha type shit, as they think it is their rightful place as celebrities to make sure small, independent cannabis companies can’t get the market share that wealthy famous assholes so richly deserve. 

The celebrity cannabis nonsense is getting so bad that Urkel from Family Matters, actor Jaleel White, just put out his own brand called ItsPurpl. Because washed-up personalities see cannabis as some novelty, get-rich-quick industry that can infuse their failing careers with a sloppy second success.

But there is only limited space on local dispensary shelves. Some of it goes to flower, some of it goes to edibles, other space goes to vape pens, tinctures, and such. Every new celebrity cannabis product from Jim Belushi, Kevin Smith, or another wealthy-inheritee Bob Marley son or daughter will knock a local, independent cannabis brand off the shelf.     

If rich and famous celebrities want to invest in cannabis companies, that’s great! That helps the small, local businesses who built this industry succeed. But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re using their star power to culture-appropriate an industry that they never once stuck up for or associated themselves with in the early, difficult days of legal cannabis. But now they want their share of that sweet marijuana money. 

Hey, if a famous person stuck their neck out for us, that’s different. Willie Nelson and Tommy Chong have been arrested and incarcerated for cannabis. Montel Williams defended medical marijuana when the mainstream still considered it a kook concept. They have every right to put their names on cannabis products, they helped build this industry. But when famous people who never said a single good word about marijuana until they thought there was real money to be made, and look it at like they’re introducing some fucking t-shirt line at Spencer’s Gifts,  those people like Gene Simmons can Kiss right off.