This Thanksgiving, weed smokers are grateful for ‘Green Wednesday’

By Scottie Andrew, CNN

(CNN) — 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 Sinali, 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, Sinali said.

“We want folks to come and get nuanced, interesting products and take them to the dinner table for their Thanksgiving holiday,” Sinali said.

The ploy has worked: Sinali said about 10 to 20% of customers at dispensaries on Green Wednesday are first-time shoppers.

And at a time when people are increasingly trading alcohol for cannabis products, Green Wednesday is becoming more popular among people who don’t typically smoke, too. Will Cohen, co-founder of the Jewish cannabis brand Tokin’ Jew, used to refer to the day before Thanksgiving as “Blackout Wednesday,” back when that meant “getting shitfaced with high school friends.” Now, alcohol and cannabis are “competing” for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, he said.

Graduate student Kara Dickson, who stopped by the Travel Agency’s Union Square location this week to stock up ahead of the holidays, said her family “really doesn’t drink together anymore.”

“We’d rather take a gummy, chill out and watch a movie,” she told CNN.

This Thursday, she said, her family plans to fill up on turkey, consume an edible each and fall asleep on the couch watching football.

Family Danksgiving

Smoking, much like the hubbub surrounding Thanksgiving, is ritualistic, said Cohen. When you’re sharing a joint, for instance, it’s custom to pass it to the person on your left. It’s a similar setup at Thanksgiving dinner, only instead of trading joints, families are sharing what they’re thankful for.

“I think it’s a way for the younger generation –– and I mean, honestly, the older generation; everyone is smoking weed, whether they share it or not –– to have the family come together,” he said.

Getting high can be a communal act, Cohen said, and on Thanksgiving, that looks like the surreptitious outing for younger family members the internet calls the “cousin walk.”

“It’s a way to bond,” he said. “It’s almost a gossip session, as well –– like, ‘Oh my god, are we going to turn out just like our parents? They’re f**king crazy!’ What a great way to do that, over a joint.”

While Dickson said her family “might be mad at me for outing them” as cannabis users, she still can’t quite believe that she’s able to get high with her parents.

“I may or may not have gotten caught in high school partaking, and they totally lost it on me, like a very good parent should,” she said. “I cannot imagine telling high school me that this is what we were doing in Thanksgiving post-college.”

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CNN’s Jasmine Amjad, Hazel Tang and Madeleine Stix contributed to this report.