Who Will Ruin Weed?

John Herrman
The Awl
Published in
2 min readJul 8, 2015

Who will own the marijuana industry? Will the pharmaceutical industry monopolize weed and market it as a mood enhancing drug? Will the tobacco industry combine its agricultural power with the planet Earth’s weird sudden vape obsession and usher in the next generation of habitual smoking? Maybe the booze conglomerates muscle in, somehow!

This is either a fun or urgent question depending on where in the future weed-industrial complex you will exist. (It is also secondary to legalization’s overall social benefits.) The subtext, of course, is this question: Who will ruin weed?

The answer is none of the above. The answer is… us. Me. You. We will ruin weed, no sinister mega-industry needed. Consider Potbox:

Consider:

Consider:

Consider:

Consider:

Consider:

Consider:

“Ruin” is a strong word. Did the craft beer enthusiasts ruin beer? Did cocktail jerks ruin bars? Nah. Did coffee idiots ruin coffee? No, no matter how hard they tried. It would be more accurate to say they made it uncool, which is to say: Weed, technically, in 2015 and especially beyond, is no longer cool. Hm! Whoa.

--

--