Via the LAT: 
‘Legal Weed’ is just beer, but Feds want to cap sales
The federal government is telling the owner of a small brewery here [Weed, CA] that the pun he’s placed on caps of his Weed Ales crosses a line.
“Try Legal Weed,” the caps joke.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau says those three little words allude to marijuana use.
[...]
The bureau’s bureaucrats have told Dillmann he needs to stop using the “Try Legal Weed” bottle caps. If he doesn’t, he could risk fines or sanctions. His worst fear: being forced out of business.
This, of course, insane. First, it is a play on words. Second, even if it was a plea for the usage of marijuana, I was unaware that the First Amendment had been repealed when it came to the subject of cannabis. Indeed, as Vaune Dillmann, owner of the brewery, said:
“This is ludicrous, bizarre, like meeting Big Brother face-to-face,” he grumbled recently. “Forget freedom of speech and the 1st Amendment. They are the regulatory gods, a judge and jury all rolled into one. This is a life-or-death issue for my business.”
According to said regulatory gods (in this case, spokesman Art Resnick):
“We consider it to be a drug reference, and find it to be false and misleading to the consumer in terms of what may or may not be the properties contained within that product,”
Well, good to see the feds wisely using their limited resources to keep us all safe from puns on bottle caps.
h/t: Jenda via e-mail who pointed me to this ABA Journal piece.
May 31st, 2024 at 3:44 pm
Someone needs to find whoever is heading up the push to make this guy change his bottle caps and give him an atomic wedgie. And perhaps a swirlie, too.
I actually don’t think the 1984 “Big Brother” analogy fits here, as loathesome as Big Brother was, there was some method and reason to the concept.
This is just plain nuts. Big Brother was not crazy. This is crazy. Just plain ridiculous.
June 3rd, 2024 at 9:31 am
[...] which I have to say: dang! that’s a lot of weed! (although not this kind of weed, for any federal officials out there reading). One would suspect that there are a number of [...]