If the legal marijuana industry learns anything from Big Tobacco’s experience in this country, it’s that mixing kids and smoking is just not going to fly, as the industry found out with the banishment of Joe Camel and his ilk. So even if medical marijuana is legal in California, it’s not legal for anyone under 18. You know, or anyone who might believe in Santa Claus.
Members of the public who are complaining about a painting of Santa Claus on the window of a Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensary that shows him as quite the Jolly St. Nick, puffing away on what appears to be a cinnamon stick blunt while holding a smoking bong, say kids are going to get the wrong idea.
NBC Los Angeles reports that people are worried that because the dispensary is in an area where a lot of children tend to be — there’s a junior high school nearby, one critic noted — those kids might see what Santa’s doing and want to copy him.
As such, the business has agreed to remove the Christmas scene, which also included a snowman holding a prescription pill bottle.
Despite the outcry on social media and elsewhere, the store manager tells the station that he didn’t realize people were ticked off about the paintings. After talking to NBC Los Angeles, he reportedly called the artist in charge of the paintings and asked him to scrape his work off the windows. No sign of smokey Santa as of yesterday afternoon.
Residents Riled Over Christmas Display of Pot-Smoking Santa [NBC Los Angeles]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
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