Letter from the Editor: Reach out and touch grass
Art by Cassondra Jones
Dearest reader,
Welcome to the Annual 4/20 Issue here at The Pitch. We’ve taken a much different approach to the usual green-tinged compendium this time around, and we’re pretty stoked about the possibilities around this new editorial direction.
Since I started here in 2019, I’ve got to play tagalong to Missouri and Kansas, as they navigate the complicated landmine fields of the marijuana landscape. The incremental start-stop herky-jerky forward momentum here has been the cause for a lot of (unnecessary) uncertainty—for law enforcement, for banks, for businesses, and across the board for consumers.
2024 feels like the year that we finally have some footing under us. With that regional acceptance of “Pot is here and it is here to stay,” we have an opportunity to lead the charge in pivoting the discourse to better reflect how we should all start thinking about the unending, great green fields rolling ahead of us.
This 4/20 Issue is where we, and we hope the community around us, start to pivot toward normalizing this part of our culture. The first big step is to start being adults about this whole thing.
When our designer Cassondra Jones looks to 4/20 publications in coastal cities and abroad, she’s seen their fundamental shift away from big cartoon leaves and stoner jokes, instead leaning in on a more grown-up, lifestyle-centric approach to this scene. The days of portraying/celebrating/embracing the traditional stoner archetypes seem lazy and borderline offensive. Why? Because in large chunks of our country, legal pot is just a part of day-to-day life for so many people. “Pot” is no longer an identity. Pot is just a thing that some people enjoy. The idea of separating the “kinds of people” who use, versus the folks who do not, is a level of “othering” that we simply can… stop doing.
So for this year’s issue, that’s been our guiding star. Normalization. We aren’t dealing with dirty words or dirty images or tarnished reputations. Marijuana isn’t some criminal enterprise, to be engaged with only in the shadows. It’s a pretty fucking cool thing that, frankly, has always been here. But for so long, that presence has also come with a social stigma. Pot users were criminal-adjacent, lesser, unmotivated, unemployable, uncaring, irresponsible, or whatever other derogatory brush chunks of society wanted to paint them as. With our new chill-out lifestyle becoming more mainstream, even those who toke up still carry residual concerns about this whole debacle, because we’ve made no meaningful, collective push to embrace this part of the human experience and strip away the gunk we buried it beneath.
This is us asking you to reach out with open arms. This is us asking you to consider stripping back the judgment, the othering, the general “weird vibes” we’ve cast in a general way towards a practice that was once (at best) viewed as a “pastime”—now generally accepted to be more of a supplement to more positive, stress-free living.
The New Normal. The Reefer Formal.
So you’ll notice this 4/20 Issue is less like our previous releases and structurally is much closer to our March BBQ Issue. That had delicious dripping food on the cover, a bunch of information and reviews inside, and it was a guilt-free celebration. This issue has gorgeous pot porn, a bunch of information and reviews inside, also serving as a guilt-free celebration.
We’ve got some guidance on the future we should expect from Denver comedian Adam Cayton-Holland, we have locally produced infused food and drink items, we profile a stellar businessman who serves as one of the corporate faces of the rise of these products in our community, and we’ve got some harder hitting stories about where legislation, advertising, and regulation are not holding up their end of the bargain.
Finally, we have a huge report running online, that you can use the following QR code to pull up. We surveyed hundreds of KC natives on how pot and pot-adjacent products have become part of their lives, what they use it for, how it has helped them, and more importantly (for those of you on the fence still) a breakdown of ages and occupations from all involved. From just legal enough to make these purchases, all the way up into their 80’s, here’s our huge deep dive into what your friends and neighbors had to say about what green living has meant to them—all while raising families, working full-time jobs, and being helpful, happier citizens.
So disconnect. Or re-connect with a part of life that you’ve kept at arm’s reach. Or don’t if it isn’t for you. But also don’t lump those who like it (or need it) into a bucket together. The bucket is gone, baby. We’re all just shiny happy people as far as the eye can see.
Pitch in, and we’ll make it through,
