• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, October 25, 2018

A study from GfK MRI reports that the most-read magazines by potheads — er, sorry, "cannabis consumers" — are People, Better Homes & Gardens, National Geographic,Men’s Health, Parents and Cosmopolitan. 

To answer your immediate question, no — High Times was not included in the study — the kind of lapse in judgment common to heavy cannabis users.

The median age of the laughingly 16% of the adult population that confesses to using THC/CBD is older than you might think at 39 and makes a little more dough, with a median household income of $66,000. 

Perhaps the most shocking part of the study is that anyone reads magazines anymore, regardless of his/her state of mind. At any rate, you have to be stoned to flip though a copy of People anyway, especially if you are waiting to see your doctor — so then you won't care that the issue is seven months old. (The Kardashians seem to transcend time, don’t they, since their 15 minutes of fame should have been up shortly after their old man got OJ off and Bruce was still Bruce.)

Cosmo makes perfect sense for this market, since its content ONLY makes sense if you are high already. Better Homes & Gardens is a littleharder to fathom, unless they have started a new section on how to grow Acapulco Gold in your own backyard. 

Men’s Health is only read by guys who are looking for a shortcut to getting cut without having to actually do all that annoying lifting. So I suspect heavy readership of those junky classified-type ads in the back that promise big bulges (here AND there) if you consume some of those non-FDA-approved supplements, many of which seem pot-like. 

National Geographic, which used to be the only magazine on the market to publish nudity in the guise of tribal studies, is perhaps the biggest mystery. Have they started doing features on the Top 10 places to buy the best weed? 

Actually, none of this should come as a big surprise, since the pictures in your head of stoners are Ridgemont High's Jeff Spicoli or Cheech Marin.  

That was then, though. This is now, when legalization and decriminalization are growing like, well weed, and pot now comes in mints and cookies and candy and everything else you can think of eating or drinking.  

The THC/CBD industry is already booming in states that have legalized pot, but much more is happening behind the scenes, as most of the major beverage and tobacco companies have begun to figure out how they can cash in on what is already an $8.5 billion market as the movement continues (and crunches their own markets).

This means it's just a matter of time before ads for pot buds, vapes and eatables hit all forms of media. We already know what Jeff Sessions thinks of all this, but since he won't be in office too terribly much longer, who knows what restrictions the Feds will put on the marketing of ganja?  Will each ad have to have a warning label like COULD CAUSE MUNCHIES LEADING TO WEIGHT GAIN or DO NOT CONSUME NEAR SOURCES OF MUSIC? 

I'm sure the Association of National Advertisers and Interactive Advertising Bureau skunk works are already prepping arguments on why it should be perfectly legal to market something that is perfectly legal. The amount of money at stake will dwarf anything that has come before. 

Pass the THC mints, will you?