If the guests at your Thanksgiving table this year are a bit moonier than usual, don’t assume they ate too much turkey. And if they seem extra enthused about digging into pie after a filling meal, well —
Adding to late November’s ever-growing list of festivities and shopping promotions, cannabis brands are now marketing “Green Wednesday:” the day before Thanksgiving, when childhood friends reunite and presumably light up. And consumers are heeding the call: Green Wednesday is the second-largest holiday for cannabis behind April 20, said Joyce Cenali, co-founder of the Cannabis Media Council, a trade group that seeks to improve the public perception of weed.
“Green Wednesday is not a real holiday,” said Jennifer Bartholomeo, a general manager of the Travel Agency, a New York dispensary chain. “But if you think about it, you’re traveling home to see your family, extended family is visiting and everyone is taking a walk with their cousin. And what do you think you’re doing on that walk?”
Whether junior relations are sneaking away from the gathering to smoke together or popping an edible to assuage their anxiety before they face the rest of the family, getting high on the 17th century feast day is an emergent 21st century tradition.
High and dry
“Green Wednesday” is a relatively new term for a familiar phenomenon: Old friends get together in their hometown and party on the eve of Thanksgiving. As cannabis products became legalized across the US in the mid-2010s, the industry started using the term in marketing to encourage friends to head to local dispensaries to get their fix, Cenali said.
“We want folks to come and get nuanced, interesting products and take them to the dinner table for their Thanksgiving holiday,” Cenali said.
The ploy has worked: Cenali said about 10 to 20% of customers at dispensaries on Green Wednesday are first-time shoppers.
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