How fitting is it that Bob Marley, legendary Jamaican reggae-rock legend, will soon be the face of what’s being called the “first global brand of marijuana?”
According to a report on ABC News, Marley’s family partnered with a Seattle-based private equity firm to create Marley Natural, “a premium cannabis brand rooted in the life and legacy” of Bob Marley. The line will include pot-infused creams, accessories (vaporizers, grinders, etc.) and strains of “heirloom Jamaican cannabis.” (His family says that this was Bob Marley’s favorite strain.) They say the brand itself will be a “modern product, cleanly packaged and marketed with the help of the same agency that branded New Balance and Starbucks Coffee.”
The cannabis will be sold as “loose packed” buds, oils or concentrate.
“This is what the end of prohibition looks like,” said Brendan Kennedy, the CEO of Privateer Holdings, which owns Marley Natural and plans to run it out of a flat on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. “Bob Marley started to push for legalization more than 50 years ago. We’re going to help him finish it.”
Bob Marley’s legacy lives on — but was there ever any doubt it would?
Let’s hear him speak:
I think this may be taking things too far. I thought legalization was going to be for the sole benefit of medical needs and now it sounds like it’s going to marketed as something purely recreational.
Some places want it for both and I would not mind it. Alcohol is far worse than pot is and when you think about this story Marley is notorious for two things – amazing music and weed. It is just a branding thing to keep his memory going on. I don’t really see anything wrong with it.
I am not so sure that he would want his name to be used as a brand for anything. This is just another instance of using the deceased to sell products. Bob Marley was not the type to have his name out there being used as business advertising.
I don’t know about that, maybe in part yes. I would kind of think it is more of a slam in the face of his family though since he had in the past stated that it was more of a spiritual thing for him.
Source: http://worldmusic.about.com/od/genres/f/Why-Did-Bob-Marley-Smoke-Marijuana.htm
I am definitely pro-decriminalization, but I’m not so sure how I feel about the marketing of marijuana. My main concern is that it will be tampered with in the industry.