Very few of us find ourselves eating a personal pizza for health benefits but some patients in Massachusetts are doing just that. Last month, the
Ermont Inc. medical cannabis dispensary in Quincy made its THC-infused 6” cheese pizzas available to the public…or at least the medical marijuana card-carrying public. Since then, news sites and patients alike have been wolfing down the latest reports of cannabis pizza.
A 2 Pizza Daily Maximum
The 6” pizzas are priced at $38 each and customers are limited to a 2-pie daily max. The not-so-secret ingredient is actually in the sauce which is infused with 125 milligrams of THC. Seth Yaffe, operations manager at Ermont Inc., points out that this is a medium-sized dose. However, the purchase of 2 personal pizzas will most likely cover the proper dosage for patients seeking higher amounts. The pizzas are frozen so they can be heated at the patients' convenience in the comforts of their own homes.
The Primary Reason Behind the Popularity of Cannabis Pizza
You may think the combination of pizza and weed is a no-brainer; a merger as iconic as peanut butter and jelly but three times as obvious. But the munchies weren’t really a primary motivator in the dispensary’s decisions to provide a THC-infused pizza. Rather, the reasons were a little more serious with Massachusetts being a state focused on cannabis for strictly medicinal purposes. “A lot of our patients really wanted to basically figure out a different way to medicate that didn’t always remind them that they were trying to do something to take care of themselves,” Yeffe explained. Thus, the cannabis pizza became an adult equivalent of the airplane spoon brimming with cough syrup. There is something to be said for the power of positive thinking as
studies from Harvard confirmed, so an “out of site, out of mind” approach may be just what the doctor ordered.
According to Yeffe, patients were also expressing frustration at a limited selection of edibles. They basically could choose from a series of cannabis-infused candies with no alternative. Pizza isn’t exactly health food but it does strike a stark contrast to sugar-saturated gummy candies and chocolates. Likewise, the pizzas can be used just as easily for a meal as a junk food snack. This helps with meting the dosage out naturally over a broader range of time.
Not the First Time
If you’re wondering why no one has thought of combining pizza and THC together before…well, they have. The latest offerings from Ermont Inc. may be receiving the novelty treatment but they definitely weren’t the first cannabis-related company at the pizza party. It’s tough to determine who definitively holds that honor, though Stoned Oven were making noise in Los Angeles with their weed pizzas at the end of 2014. Stoned Oven sold their 6” personal pizzas through several LA-area dispensaries at $10 a pop and were raking in upwards of $30,000 weekly. While Ermont Inc. offers a mid-sized dose of 125 milligrams of THC per pizza, Stoned Oven were doubling that at 250 milligrams of THC per pizza.
Ermont Inc. may have everyone’s attention with their cannabis-infused personal pizzas but this isn’t their first foray into culinary creativity. They’ve previously provided gourmet desserts such as peach cobbler, beverages like hot chocolate and even other savory dishes such as THC-infused quiche. But with several hundred pizzas already sold, they may find themselves struggling to outdo a tried-and-true favorite.
