Candy shaped like cannabis leaf: Just in time for those hungry OWS hippies
I though this was a joke when I first read it. Stores all over America are selling candy shaped like marijuana leaves:
Candy shaped like marijuana that’s showing up on store shelves around the country won’t get kids high, but aghast city leaders and anti-drug activists say the product and grocers carrying it represent a new low.
“We’re already dealing with a high amount of drug abuse and drug activity and trying to raise children so they don’t think using illegal substances is acceptable,” said City Councilmember Darius Pridgen. “So to have a licensed store sell candy to kids that depicts an illegal substance is just ignorant and irresponsible.”
The “Pothead Ring Pots,” “Pothead Lollipops” and bagged candy are distributed to retail stores by the novelty supply company Kalan LP of the Philadelphia suburb of Lansdowne. It also wholesales online for $1 for a lollipop and $1.50 for a package of three rings.
Company president Andrew Kalan said the candy, on the market six to nine months and in 1,000 stores around the country, promotes the legalization of marijuana.
“It does pretty well,” he said.
“This is the first complaint I’ve heard,” Kalan said, “and people are usually not shy. I’m actually surprised this is the first.”
An irate parent brought the candy to Pridgen’s attention, hoping the city could apply pressure and get it out of stores.
Pridgen and Councilmember Demone Smith displayed the candy, along with fake marijuana known as “K2” that’s also sold in some stores at Tuesday’s Common Council meeting, where Pridgen said he’d refuse to grant licenses to stores in his district that planned to sell the merchandise and would seek to embarrass stores that carry it. The synthetic marijuana is sold as incense but is smoked.
Synthetic marijuana typically involves dried plant material sprayed with one of several chemical compounds. The products contain organic leaves coated with chemicals that provide a marijuana-like high when smoked. The Drug Enforcement Administration recently used its emergency powers to outlaw five chemicals found in synthetic marijuana.
It appeared Pridgen’s message had gotten out by Thursday. A check of about a half-dozen stores in Buffalo, often in impoverished neighborhoods where real drugs are a festering problem, turned up none of the controversial candy.
The bags of “Pothead Sour Gummy Candy,” and lollipops shaped like marijuana leaves appear to be a recent addition to the inventory of some corner stores. The sour apple-flavored candy contains nothing illegal, but with its marijuana leaf, the word “Legalize” and a joint-smoking, peace sign-waving user on the packaging, critics say it’s not only in poor taste but an invitation to try the real thing.
“It’s the whole idea that it promotes drugs and the idea that, here, you’ll look cool if you use this – which is what gets these kids in trouble in the very first place,” said Jodie Altman, program supervisor at Renaissance House, a treatment center for drug- and alcohol-addicted youth.
Charmaine Rosendary, 36, of Buffalo shook her head when she saw a picture of the package.
“That’s not right. It’s just promoting marijuana,” she said while buying produce Friday at a Buffalo market. She said she wouldn’t allow her five teenagers, ages 15-19, to have it.
“I would not buy it or give them money to buy it,” she said. “It looks like weed.”
Seriously? I am an ardent capitalist, but this defies all common sense and indicates questionable judgement. From looking at the photo accompanying this story, the product is clearly marketed to kids.
Instead of targeting the nation’s kids, the candy company should refocus on a promising new target: the filthy stoner morons participating in this ‘Occupy Wall Street’ nonsense. I am sure they are frequently in need of something to cure their ‘munchies.’
The time for morons running the show is coming to an end!… Quit yapping about your concerns for kids and keeping them safe from harm by lying to them just about everything. Cannabis, which has to this day failed to be proven harmful by all non-manipulated official medical reports and yet remains arbitrarily punishable by life wrecking prison sentences, in spite of the lack of evidence to support any harmful effects or reactions in the thousands of years it’s been in use world wide, is just another well sustained mega lie, which we have sadly become used to. They lie about the purpose of war and banned weed in part because it makes people non-violent and question political motives by helping one think outside the box created to conceal the real reasons of special interest groups trying to monopolize the control over power providing resources around the world. Lets not talk about the recent in-your-face insults of the Bush administration in regards to 9/11, WMDs in Iraq, the whole Ben Laden fiasco and now Gaddafi. Everything about governments is flawed in recent perspective, ask the OWS movement aimed at overturning the imbalance of wealth power and truth while being actively ignored, discredited, and ridiculed by the same machine which proclaims democracy but suppresses personal rights to well being on all levels of popular preference, even the right to complain when so many around the globe are suffering and collectively and peacefully asking for a change in their difficult living conditions. It doesn’t take an expert in economics to realize that humanity has deteriorated beyond indecency over greed and that is not acceptable nor is it permissible for educated people to still be on the payroll to use their cleverness at manipulation for the maintaining of poor souls in the dark alleys of ignorance for the profitability of a promiscuous few. healthcare is a joke in the US. Education quality is forfeited to bureaucratic agendas hiding behind lack of funding in favor of more important financing including military budgets. Social values are below humane standards but marketed to appear at a constant high to the formatted ignorant who blindly follows the masses lead by the secret objective of deceitful leaders… and the list goes on but LOL… those days are soon gone little one. Game Over! Now you will all enter the elevated zone… watch your step!:-)