New battle lines being drawn after legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado
Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's, suggested that the revolving door between the mainstream media and Doritos is "embedded deeper than the gobs of chocolate chip, cookie dough, and fudge brownies in Ben and Jerry's Half Baked, our flagship product."
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Updated 4:20 pm, Sunday, January 5, 2014
DENVER (Loiters) — As Colorado kicks off the new year as the first state in the US to allow the sale of recreational marijuana, the battle between US federal drug laws and state laws have taken a back seat to a new battle between makers of snacks that cater to a booming market of hungry marijuana users.
In a statement released this morning by Hostess Brands, the makers of Twinkies, the management responsible for sending the once-profitable company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2012 accused the mainstream media of creating the impression not only that Doritos is the junk food of choice by users of recreational marijuana, but also that it is the only tasty food consumed by stoners.
In the press release, Twinkies spokesperson Olivia Kraft-Quiznos stopped short of accusing the mainstream media of being in the back pocket of Frito-Lay, the makers of Doritos, the tasty snack beloved by Americans of all stripes independent of their position on the issue of legalization of recreational marijuana.
During an afternoon press conference later in the day, Ms. Kraft-Quiznos, a major player responsible for the loss of over $100 million of shareholders' money, asserted that "Deep-fried Twinkies were the food of choice among potheads fried on Master Yoda and Super Lemon Haze. Twinkes was also a major sponsor of both the Cannabis Cup and the Million Marijuana March in 2013, yet all the mainstream media could talk about was Doritos, Doritos, Doritos."
Alex Nutella, Chief Marketing Officer at Frito Lay, rebuffed this claim, asking rhetorically, "What stoner in his or her right mind would pay to eat the deep-fried leftover inventory of a company under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection?" Alex B. Toklas, manager of flavor engineering at Doritos and active participant in both events last year, added, "I don't actually remember either event, but as a discriminating connoisseur of Sour Amnesia I know I would have remembered if I ate any Twinkies during my Rocky Mountain high."
Other makers of snacks, such as Oreos, Pepperidge Farm, and Cosmic Brownies, disagreed with this assessment, some going so far as to accuse Frito Lay of lining the pockets of the mainstream media. Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's, suggested that the revolving door between the mainstream media and Doritos is "embedded deeper than the gobs of chocolate chip, cookie dough, and fudge brownies in Ben and Jerry's Half Baked, our flagship product."
In a widely anticipated follow-up to his controversial op-ed piece on marijuana legalization in the New York Times (http://goo.gl/...), the moderate conservative David Brooks wrote that "for a little while in my teenage years, my friends and I ate Twinkies. They were yummy." However, added Mr. Brooks, "we all sort of moved away from Twinkies. . . . I think we had a sense, which all people have, or should have, that Doritos not only are tastier, but bite-for-bite have far fewer calories."
Mr. Brooks cautioned that, "[m]any people these days shy away from talk about the moral status of Twinkies consumption because that would imply that one sort of food you might eat is better than another snack. In healthy, sophisticated societies, however, governments should subtly encourage the highest gustatory pleasures, such as smoked salmon caviar roulade or pâté de foie gras."
At the time of this publication, Mr. Brooks was unavailable for comment. On Twitter, Mr. Brooks, who goes by the handle of Occasional Spliffmeister, wrote, "Off for the weekend to Aspen with Bubba Kush (Ruth Marcus http://goo.gl/...)."