Seriously, I don’t think I have a single positive thing to say about the last 10 years except that smoking weed has gotten better
Talking Joints Memo has been close to the team behind the New England Cannabis Convention since its inception in 2015, and are excited to be partnering with NECANN on a special glossy print magazine in honor of the 10-year anniversary in 2024. The publication, which will be free to Boston convention attendees on a first-come, first-served basis, will feature everything from photo galleries and highlights from the past decade to editorials, interviews, and columns like this one by Mass cannabis comedian Alex Giampapa.
I’m writing a 10-year retrospective on marijuana, and I’m thrilled to not be writing it on anything else—because we’ve had progress with marijuana, and I’m not sure if we’ve really moved forward with literally anything else in America in the past decade.
If my calculations are correct, 2014 was 10 years ago. I don’t have to tell you this, but the US back then was a whole lot different than the nation in 2024. And sure, things are always going to change over a 10-year period—but it’s not usually this much. I mean, from ’95 to ’04, we also watched terrorism unfold at home and abroad while the US leaned into its love for war; it’s nothing new, but now that’s something we keep on the schedule every few years.
To my point—we’re still doing it, and there’s so much going on at the same time. Gone are the days when the entire media and American populace gathered ’round the same subject to obsess. After Trump’s win in 2016, the MeToo Movement, the pandemic (along with the largest transfer of wealth in human history), it’s now Biden’s broken brain, a fear of Trump’s return, abortion rights, our role in multiple wars, the rise of AI, rampant inflation, scattered labor movements, the endless Epstein scandal, a new censorship regime, Kanye West, and, oh, right, UFOs. I need a blunt.
Seriously, I don’t think I have a single positive thing to say about the last 10 years except that smoking weed has gotten better. Maybe it’s part of our fearless government’s plan: to allow us to consume more cannabis based on how fucked up and crazy shit gets. They’re like, Okay … today we’re announcing that aliens are real, that all humans were crossbred between extraterrestrials and apes, and your whole existence is a random space experiment. Wanna legalize edibles in Kansas?
It still feels surreal to walk into a store, look at a menu, and pick out a preferred strain. After buying weed the old way, I feel spoiled, like a boomer trying to explain the old days to their kids. We didn’t have a dispensary! We’d go to the Chili’s parking lot and wait for a guy named Fat Kyle; he’d text us he was 20 minutes away, and then 20 minutes later he’d text us again and say he was 30 minutes away. And we didn’t complain!No matter how crazy the rest of the world gets, the cannabis community can find solace in all the wins in recent years, as well as the ones to come. No matter what happens next November, you’re legally allowed to put weed in a bong and smoke it. Even if the aliens enslave the human race, we can still pass them a joint. I bet they’d say, These monkeys aren’t good for anything but war and greed. Total failed experiment. Their weed, though? Real good shit.
