HIGH TIMES
When California voted to legalise recreational cannabis in November 2016, weed smokers could have been forgiven for checking the contents of their bongs. California was soon followed by Canada. It was a watershed moment. As the comedian John Mulaney remarked: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen a law change because the government is just like, ‘Fine’.”
I was living in Los Angeles during the “green rush”, and there was a heady sense of possibility in the air. I went to marijuana Tupperware parties; I visited a feminist cannabis collective; I marvelled at the billboards for green tech start-ups that lined motorways; and I reassessed the drug I had written off as a bad thing in my early twenties. My way back in was a chic, golden vape pen made by Beboe, the “Hermes of marijuana”, which now has a concession in luxury department store Barneys. The high became high-end. My wife – a lifelong weed refusenik – took to dabbling in cannabis-infused coconut powder, one of many products aimed at people who would never have considered rolling a joint.
“Cannabis is on a global journey from drug to medicine to lifestyle,” says Gavin Sathianathan, founder of Alta-Flora, a biopharmaceutical start-up. Sathianathan made the transition to the cannabis industry in 2015 after 10 years in tech. At first, he says, announcing you worked in cannabis was a conversation killer. Now it’s a starter. “You can travel down the Pacific coast of North
