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Woe to the midnight toker unable to express herself beyond words!
If you’re feeling too blunted by the herb to type out full words this 4/20 holiday, it would behoove you to check out a new petition calling for the creation of “cannabis-friendly” emojis.
Your iPhone emoticon keyboard is feeling irie today.
Photo by Cresco Labs
The proposed emojis include a marijuana leaf, a pair of peace-sign fingers with a smoldering joint wedged in between, and an elated face with cannabis for eyeballs.
There are already emojis depicting wine and beer, a stick of dynamite, a juggling clown, and a smiling turd. So, pray tell, what antiquated, Reefer Madness-era reservations are standing in the way of marijuana emojis?
Sponsored by the national cannabis company Cresco Labs, the petition seeks at least 500 signatures to get weed-centered emojis onto standard smartphone keyboards. As of noon on 4/20, roughly 270 people had signed.
“Alcohol has eight emojis on the iPhone keyboard,” Cresco creative strategist Zachary Raber cited as his reason for signing the petition. “Time for weed to have a better option… Let’s go!”
Cresco, one of the biggest cannabis companies in the country, says it is high time for weed emoticons now that 93 percent of the U.S. population has access to legal cannabis.
“Ahead of 4/20, the biggest cannabis holiday, we saw that Apple released a software update that included 21 new emojis, none of which included cannabis-friendly emojis,” a spokesperson from Chicago-based Cresco tells New Times.
“With normalization and acceptance of cannabis at an all-time high, we were inspired to launch an online petition calling for cannabis emojis,” Cresco says.
In the absence of dedicated emojis, folks for years have been making do with stand-ins like the four-leaf clover, palm tree, or fireball.
Graphic by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
None of this has escaped the eyes of the crack agents at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who published a sophisticated “decoded” emoji drug reference on its website. In keeping with the federal government’s increasingly anachronistic practice of keeping cannabis as a Schedule I drug, the list apparently lumps marijuana in with hard drugs like methamphetamine and heroin.
“With the help of federal investigators, the DEA has compiled a list of emojis that reflect common examples of drugs,” the DEA states. “The one for mushrooms seems pretty self-explanatory…”
