Editorial: How weed is sold defines how weed is used

EDITORIAL | RONGOA / DRUGS

Editorial by Liam Hansen (they/them) | @liamhanse.n | Editor-in-Chief

Illustrated by Stella Roper (they/she) | @dodofrenzy | Arts Editor

My partner and I have been on a Try Guys kick for about two months now. We’re both brain-rotted zoomers with a need for constant background stimulation, who unfortunately grew up on relatively different sides of the YouTube algorithm. While my partner isn’t particularly keen on watching a four-hour-long video essay about the panning in the 2009 stereo remasters of The Beatles' studio discography, I’m not keen on watching reruns of ‘Border Security: America's Front Line’. Naturally, former BuzzFeed staff taking their challenge video series independent and building a successful online media company (who are now known best for the “Wife Guy” of the groups’ affair with a younger employee and subsequent removal) is where we met in the middle. 

While it’s partially a nostalgia watch for us, we’ve recently appreciated seeing how the Try Guys have grown past that scandal into a small-scale streaming service model that has been running somewhat well, according to themselves, particularly given how they’ve been able to experiment with riskier content that wouldn’t go down well on YouTube. This includes a cannabis themed talk show aptly titled “Smoke Show”, where founding member Zach Kornfield and friends legally test out the effects of different weed strains as an educational veil to the stupid and fun concept of a stoned talk show. It’s fitting, given how the first time I saw weed depicted as anything other than “Lettuce That Fucking Kills You” was when they all got baked and drove through an obstacle course under the guise of proving why you probably shouldn’t get baked and drive at all - let alone through an obstacle course!

The first episode of Smoke Show is the only episode of the series where they show us the cannabis straight out of the packaging - and in California, weed is packaged in a cunty little jar that would look right at home in a Farro. I looked upon our shitty bedroom TV screen in awe and envy. Here in Aotearoa, cannabis came decimal points close to being legalised and regulated across the country via a nationwide referendum - but was narrowly outweighed by the ‘no’ vote, leaving those using cannabis recreationally to stick to the black market, and many medical marijuana users still obtaining it illegally due to increasing difficulties in getting a prescription. With all of the horror the United States puts itself through, the cannabis laws of its most progressive states seemed like they were sorely missing in Aotearoa. If nothing else, for the sake of getting weed in a millennial jar that reeks of gentrification. 

In the midst of a brief interview with Chlöe Swarbrick reflecting on the 2020 cannabis referendum, I realised that what I had seen on American screens was not only far from the approach she had pitched in her first-term campaign for the ‘yes’ vote, but would’ve run the risk of creating an entirely new problem. “The Greens were really heavily involved in legislation that was effectively prioritising public health and public good over the potential for corporate profiteering, the likes of the legislation that we saw in frameworks in California, and many other jurisdictions in the States. We didn't see the influx of money that you see in those jurisdictions when they have their referendums, because people saw the dollar signs. So, ironically, because we had brought forward a harm minimisation proposal, we didn't see the same influx of money backing a yes campaign.”

Whilst I knew going into the interview that the approach pitched for Aotearoa was centred around harm reduction, I didn’t realise just how much law changes in the United States and Canada weren’t. Which is understandable, given that I’ve only really seen progressive America’s legal cannabis market in its current capitalistic state, and Aotearoa’s weed legislation never got to the point where we would see how the approach differed. A good comparison point for the two approaches to recreational sale of cannabis is two similarly widespread drugs - tobacco and alcohol. 

Despite being far more available in dairies than we would’ve ever seen for cannabis, the direction Aotearoa was taking towards tobacco sales and possession before Smokefree 2025 was thrown out by the coalition for a quick buck. “One of the more annoying red herrings or bad faith arguments I hear is: 'What about Smokefree 2025?'”Swarbrick states. “Back when we were negotiating Smokefree 2025 in Parliament, I actually managed to get a provision in there that protected people who wanted to grow their own tobacco. Tobacco is always going to exist,  but if we remove the massive commercial entities from it, then we’re operating in a similar space to what we were proposing for cannabis law reform.” 

Many aspects of harm minimisation that have been applied to the sale of tobacco could be applied to the legal sale of cannabis. Since 2018, cigarettes have been sold in intentionally ugly and boring packaging, coloured in garish yellows and olive greens (that I, admittedly, don’t hate). Less appealing are the graphic images of tooth decay, rotted lungs, gangrene-riddled feet, and sad children. While the impact of these regulations has lessened over the years as smokers have gotten used to the packaging, we still saw a rise in consumer awareness, and it’s fair enough to cite the change as one of the reasons cigarette and tobacco sales have remained steadily decreasing in Aotearoa. 

While cannabis isn’t harmless, the physical ramifications aren’t as easy to visually depict as they are for tobacco use; maybe one day we’ll see legal cannabis packaged with graphic warnings of lost memory cells, sore throats, or illustrations of couch-ridden stoners unable to do anything as they process the chunky doobies they’ve just inhaled. But there’s still clear value in taking the power of marketing and colourful packaging away from possibly harmful substances, as we can see on the other end of the spectrum in alcohol packaging and marketing. Despite excessive alcohol consumption leading to clear and direct negative consequences for one's health and wellbeing, colourful craft beer cans still line the walls of Farro supermarkets and liquor is widely advertised across Aotearoa with minimal regulation. 

The point I’m making now is essentially the gist of Chlöe Swarbrick's arguments for the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill back in 2023. In the dream world of all Young Greens where both bills passed, Swarbrick miraculously became prime minister, and the coalition leaders were made to wear dunce caps and sit in a glass box to be pointed and laughed at in the middle of the newly named Auckland War-Is-Bad-Actually Museum, alcohol and weed would be sold in similarly regulated, health-focused, uncool ways without fun advertising or cool mascots. Swarbrick reckons that the Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) bill “was very much trying to draw the parallels to how we could completely regulate cannabis to minimise harm, and people were going, “What about alcohol?” And I was like, “Great, so you understand how I feel about alcohol!”

She continued, “You end up with a situation whereby, whether it’s under criminal prohibition - where you have criminal entities - or whether it’s under a completely legal free market - where its commercial entities - both of those extremes are incentivised effectively to shift as much of their product as possible in order to make their quote back, which obviously means that the well-being of communities ends up lower on the pecking order or the priority list, because profit is the major driver.”  To be clear: myself, nor the Greens, have advocated for taking away fun beer can designs, but when we’re talking about the possibility of introducing recreational cannabis into Aotearoa, it makes sense to take away the ability for cannabis to be marketed or profited from in any way. 

This goes to the core of how the way legal recreational drugs could theoretically be sold in a regulated market, and particularly how it was pitched in the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill: “The intention was to make cannabis boring, and to reconcile with its existence as normal.” Minimised marketing and boring packaging of tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis could lead to an even field for substances with risk of community harm, taking away the ability for corporations to profit from drug abuse and addiction in the same way legalising weed can take some of the power away from the illegal drug market. 

Of course, these changes aren’t only unlikely to happen anytime soon - they’ve been voted down every time attempts have been made to implement them into the law. We can’t know for sure how Aotearoa would have changed if seventy thousand people had voted differently in 2020, but we do know that the referendum's failure hasn’t magically eradicated cannabis or the risks it poses to those still acquiring weed, recreational or medical, through the black market. “We’ve spent 40 years trying to eradicate their existence, and those substances have become more prevalent, more harmful - essentially more toxic, and more deadly. We’ve seen them tear families apart, whether it’s through reduction or use of those substances, let alone interfacing with the criminal justice system.” 

As Swarbrick barrelled through her reflections on the referendum, making haste so she could save both our time and get back to the House of Representatives, I realised I had been imagining those same jars of cannabis I had seen in the Try Guys video lining shelves in the alternative universe where the bill passed, rather than packaging aiming to bore you or warn you away from weed. Maybe I’m too much of an illustration nerd to advocate for losing the funky little guys on my beer cans, but I do hope that if/when Aotearoa returns to the recreational cannabis debate, that bland packaging remains on the cards - at least, while the drug is initially rolled out. I’ll miss the allure of switching out sandwich bags for cunty jars, but making weed unmarketable and uncool will cut the ability for major corporations to weaponise cannabis addiction for profit in the same way they have in the past for tobacco and currently for alcohol. If I may squeeze in one more quote:

“So again, if we’re going to be grown-ups about this, we have to say: drugs exist. Do we want to minimise the harm of their existence or not?”