Pot-Flavored Gummy Bears Out Of The Back Of A Truck

[Photo via MSNBC]

When I went to catch the subway yesterday, the station was crawling with hordes of people wearing the Puerto Rican flag and twice as many cops. So you know they were expecting SOMETHING to go down. Yet while some arrests were made as happens with any peaceable gathering, it was not the fiasco situation many Upper East Siders were predicting—maybe because it was just too damn hot. But the one amusing story that emerged out of it was the sale of marijuana lollipops a block away.

Out of the back of a green van with nearly naked women, three guys from Alabama were selling gummy bears and lollipops that were pot-flavored—and they wisely claimed to undercover cops that their candy actually contained the drug. (You know—because brownies probably would have been a harder sell in New York without a wrapper.) While they were charged with the criminal sale of marijuana after getting arrested, and I doubt that candy has actually been lab-tested for drugs yet, the sale of marijuana lollipops is hardly new. In fact, it's been pissing off law-makers for years after Pot Suckers started appearing on bodega shelves. The difference is that those are made with hemp oil, to get the taste of marijuana without the, er, other effects. Now, weed never really appealed to me, so maybe someone can explain—what is the POINT? Isn't having the taste without the high just a tease, or is it something for recovering potheads, like nonalcoholic beer for alcoholics?