If we didn’t smoke joints with other peoples’ spit on them, would we ever smoke joints at all?
Thinking back over decades of smoking cannabis, the average stoner should be able to hazily recall no shortage of joints licked by and shared with countless strangers at concerts, festivals, house parties, Bar Mitzvahs, and the recess during court-mandated drug counseling sessions. Most of these smoking partners didn’t have names, they barely had faces, but many of them drove vans.
• How to Get High Without Dying from Coronavirus
• How to Use a Joint Roller to Roll a Perfect Joint
• Illinois Sold a Record-Breaking $61 Million of Legal Cannabis Last Month
These ghosts of shared joints past came to mind this week while reading about a recall in the state of Michigan, more specifically, the recall of THOUSANDS of pre-rolled joints because some employee at a packing facility licked pre-rolls during the packing process.
In a statement announcing the recall, Michigan’s Marijuana Regulatory Agency (MRA) said “consumers who have these contaminated pre-rolls in their possession should return them to the provisioning center or retailer where they were purchased for proper disposal,” adding that “provisioning centers must notify patients and caregivers who purchased these pre-rolls of the recall.”
The statement says nothing further about the contamination, only that they received a “confirmed complaint regarding pre-rolls contaminated with human saliva,” and that the company 3843 Euclid LLC has ceased production pending completion of the MRA investigation.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the dispensary workers that now have to call customers and tell them “hi you purchased a Strawnana premium pre-roll on July 14th, Kyle at the factory may have licked it during the packing process.”
The MRA statement begs the question – how many joints did he or she lick? Did he or she place any of them over their ear afterward? Were any of the pre-rolls placed in a pack of cigarettes for safekeeping? Did a joint tear on the seam, and the employee licked a piece of rolling paper and patched it?
Before we hang a man, we want to know what he stands accused of.
On the website of the cannabis producer 3843 Euclid LLC, which also operates Dispo, a retail and medical store at 3843 Euclid Ave in Bay City, there is no statement about the recall. Surprisingly, there also doesn’t appear to be any new job openings for pre-roll packers, though the “careers” page does have a very cryptic message about finding “the ideal essay writing service, or article ghostwriter,” along with a link to a professional essay writing service.
The recall is pretty impressive. According to the MRA statement, it affects all of the pre-rolls in packages made by 3843 Euclid LLC over a two-week period beginning in mid-July. The joints are from a wide variety of strains, including Nightmare Cookies, Fruity Pebbles, Purple Urkle, and Pineapple Cheese, among others. They were sold at nearly a dozen retail locations, and according to the MRA, customers who purchased them “should return them to the provisioning center or retailer where they were purchased for proper disposal.”
We can only ask that they be given a proper burial, or that science could find a way to sanitize them so they can be safely smoked.
There is no consensus regarding how long the coronavirus that transmits COVID-19 can stay on inanimate objects, and how easily it can be passed from an object to a person. Regardless, until we know more, or until the pandemic is over, it’s probably best to order cannabis from companies you trust, in sealed containers that you are confident have not been tampered with — e.g., licked.
This is a brave new world of legal marijuana in the times of a plague, act accordingly.
Leave a Reply