“We Care Where the Plant Came From”: Says Company That Fired Everyone Who Actually Smokes It

By Boof du Jour

By the time the CEO finishes saying “legacy” for the fourth time, you already know how this story ends. Not with community. Not with respect. With HR cc’d and the people who actually built this industry quietly escorted out the back door.

Welcome to modern cannabis: where ownership speaks in hushed, reverent tones about where the plant came from while actively purging anyone who looks like they might’ve met it personally.

They’ll tell you they honor Humboldt. They’ll name-drop the underground. They’ll frame weed like it’s a sacred artifact pulled from a velvet-lined reliquary. Then-without blinking-they’ll fire a budtender for “stoner energy,” deny accommodations to medical patients, and replace half the staff with people who learned cannabis through a slide deck.

This is not irony. This is strategy.

The Plant Is Sacred. The People Are “Unprofessional.”

Every cannabis pitch deck now includes the same opening slide: Roots. Ritual. Respect. Sometimes there’s a dusty barn photo. Sometimes a black-and-white grow shot stolen from Google Images. Always a quote about honoring those who came before. fast forward two slides and the tone shifts.

Suddenly we’re talking about:

• “Elevating the workforce”

• “Reducing cultural risk”

• “Creating a more polished customer experience”

Translation: Anyone who actually smokes weed needs to go.

Budtenders get coached on not looking like they consume the product they sell. Medical patients are flagged as “attendance risks.” Longtime employees are quietly sidelined because they don’t “fit the brand direction”- a direction that suspiciously points straight toward beige offices and LinkedIn headshots.

The plant stays. The culture clocks out.

Selective Nostalgia Is a Hell of a Drug

Owners love the past - just not the people still living in it.

They’ll romanticize outlaw growers while implementing zero-tolerance drug policies.

They’ll praise community resilience while cutting staff who need flexibility for chronic illness.

They’ll sell “heritage strains” grown by people who’ve never risked anything more dangerous than a missed KPI.

This is nostalgia with guardrails. 

A museum version of culture. Glass-cased. Deodorized. Safe for investors.

The irony is thick enough to roll into a blunt, but nobody in leadership would know how.

From Legacy to Liability, Overnight

Talk to anyone who’s been in cannabis longer than five minutes and you’ll hear the same story:

“They loved my experience until they realized I actually lived it.”

Legacy knowledge is welcomed-briefly. Long enough to extract value. Short enough to avoid discomfort. Once the processes are documented and the vibe is stripped for parts, the original people become “difficult,” “dated,” or “not scalable.”

The industry didn’t move on from stoners. It used them and upgraded.

Culture as Costume

Cannabis culture has become wardrobe. Something to wear in marketing and discard in operations.

You’ll see it in:

• Campaigns full of grit made by people allergic to it

• Executives preaching authenticity while banning authenticity from the breakroom

• “Community-first” brands that panic when employees act like a community

They don’t want culture. They want the aesthetic of culture, without the mess, the smoke, or the people.

Final Hit

If you truly care where the plant came from, maybe stop treating the people who carried it like a compliance issue. Because right now, “we respect the plant” sounds a lot like “thank you for your service, now please vacate the premises.”

And no amount of heritage copy is going to cover the smell of that hypocrisy.