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New York City’s Upper Crust are Discovering the Wonders of Cannabis
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Manhattan socialites are opening up about their love for ganja.
Published on March 19, 2017

On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, nannies look after the children and black cars push chauffeured passengers to their penthouse cocktail parties. But at those soirees, the intoxicant of choice is quickly changing, with socialite tastes following national trends, and turning from expensive wine, craft liquors and prescription pills to designer strains, infused confections and discreet vaporizers.

“The other day, we were stoned out of our minds, under-the-floor hysterical,” Jeri, a retired celebrity jewelry designer, told the New York Post. “My friends came at 12:30 p.m. and didn’t leave until 6:30 p.m. Everyone wants to come to my house.”

Jeri isn’t her real name, of course, the socialite-stoner has introduced all her friends to the wonders of weed, but still isn’t ready for the world to know her smokey secret. It makes sense, too - when Jeri first offered a puff to her celebutante peers, the women turned up their noses like it was a trip to the sale aisle at Macy’s.

“The girls looked at me like, ‘What are you doing?’ It was like I had a weapon on me.” Jeri said.

But after her girlfriends got over the stigma and tried their first infused gummies and took their first hit of top-shelf trees, it didn’t take long for the wealthy women to convert to full-stop stoners.

“They are texting me, ‘Can you hook me up?’ Like all of a sudden, I’ve turned into the Madison Avenue drug dealer?” Jeri said. “It’s great.”

Jeri was introduced to weed by her son, a cannabis industry professional currently working in Colorado. Now when she goes cross-country to visit him, her private plane always has a little extra luggage on the way back. But while Jeri might be a new type of plug, she’s just one of many Manhattan cultural elites getting high on the regular.

“It used to be a thing — if you did pot brownies at a party, no one would ever talk to you again,” A 40-something Manhattan socialite in the beauty industry told the Post. “Now, the first thing people give you when you walk into their house are edibles . . . and these are Fortune 500 CEOs — Upper East Side, rule-abiding people.”

Wednesday Martin, the neighborhood’s most popular social critic and author of the memoir Primates of Park Avenue, doesn’t see the trend slowing one bit.

“This summer on the East End, edibles will be the new rosé,” Martin told the Post.

Maybe next winter the influential stoners can put their money where their smoke is and petition the city and state for full legalization so more NYC residents can enjoy cannabis as freely as the social elite.

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Zach Harris
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Zach Harris is a writer based in Philadelphia whose work has appeared on Noisey, First We Feast, and Jenkem Magazine. You can find him on Twitter @10000youtubes complaining about NBA referees.
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