Smart People Smoke Weed 🌱

The Ad Agency Outing that Changed My Perspective on Cannabis in the Workplace

13 years ago I got my first internship at an ad agency and learned that cannabis is rampant in the professional world.

I got the internship through the MIZZOU alumni group, and was deathly afraid of word getting back to them if I were to fail a drug test.

So, I started smoking K2 (and similar popularized synthetic cannabinoids) for the last month of freshman year. This would also be when I was introduced to two of my oldest friends (more on that at another time).

First, the drug test never happened.

Second, the head of the department ended up leaving for another job during my internship, and had a celebratory work happy hour where he’d share a story that confirmed my beliefs:

Smart people smoke weed. (And some of them even grow it!)

With some goading from colleagues who’d been privileged to hear the story before, this former department head laid into a tale of sneaking seeds back from Amsterdam to grow cannabis in one of the forests in the neighborhood, and this was back when pot was SUPER NOT legal.

I remember feeling all kinds of ways:

• Excitement that I wasn’t alone as a cannabis consumer in…