Society
Now what? - Lauren Booth remembers being stoned (just)
Published 10 February 2003
Stone-head sterling has replaced the pink pound and the singleton's cash
The people who sell us "impulse" products have stumbled across perhaps the last, great, untapped constituency of consumers, "the stoned". Trend analysts have finally sussed what "having the munchies" means in market terms. It means there are virtually housebound, hungry, armchair philosophers just waiting to be sold crap food, crap games and crap telly. These temporarily dim-witted buyers are as likely to buy a Stairmaster as a bumper pack of mini-rolls and, better still, they'll eat whatever reaches them fastest. When you're stoned, you don't get all fussy and "organic" - checking ingredients or sell-by dates. In fact, during my stoned decades, quality was never an issue - quantity was: a phrase guaranteed to bring a smile to the lips of any corporate executive.
It feels strange consigning being stoned to my past. But, frankly, the buzz of feeling too heavy to move off the sofa, and being unable to focus on the simplest task while being prone to wonderful flights of transcendental fancy, is currently available via the sleep deprivation that arrived with my newborn.
Once upon a time, though, rolling a "J" guaranteed an evening, or even a weekend orgy of pizza and garlic bread. Followed by eight chocolate bars, the cheese at the back of the fridge melted and eaten with a spoon and a whole tub of strawberry ice cream.
Even after that mountain of food I was still interested in outdoor pursuits. So my boyfriend and I would invite other couples to join us for obsessive eight-hour-long golfing tournaments - on the Sega Megadrive.
Now I come to think of it, I've never been as "brand conscious" as when I smoked regularly. Those trend analysts are really on to something. If I ate pizza, it had to be the one that's famous for its stuffed crust. Only the crumbliest tastiest chocolate would do, accompanied by an American ice cream created by corporate hippies. As for TV - well, anything showing grown men falling down, animals skateboarding or Brad Pitt without a shirt on was greeted with screams of utter joy.
"This is the greatest thing I've ever seen. Ever," I once
said while watching Blind Date. Pretty desperate, I know.
Then there was the Sunday at home when I was still at college. Family and friends were watching TV after a big Sunday lunch. I had snuck off to my room for a smoke and came back red-eyed and unable to talk. After an hour watching EastEnders I became upset and complained about the ever-changing cast of no-hopers whose acting was getting worse and worse.
"Who the hell are these people?" I moaned. "And what's the big deal about that bloody old wardrobe?"
My mum's guests looked at me in amazement. EastEnders had finished an hour earlier and they were watching The Antiques Roadshow.
It's late-night telly that will be the first casualty as executives seek to please and obtain cash from the stoned viewer. For stone heads, You've Been Framed is the upper echelon of comic genius. Without drugs, would Mark Lamarr and Never Mind the Buzzcocks have made it this far?
This potential to dumb down and the opportunity to sell us any old rubbish must explain this government's curiously liberal willingness to downgrade cannabis to a class C drug next year. New Labour is giving the fast food and entertainment industries a helping hand by creating a newly decriminalised marketplace worth upwards of £120m per week.
Forget the flirty thirties, with their chardonnay and their Marlboro Light loyalties; or garden centres specialising in flogging flashy garden furniture to well-off homosexual couples. Stone-head sterling is the new pink pound.
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