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Cannabis edibles are being included in the menu of professional catering services in places like Georgetown or Beverly Hills, and not with a sort of wink and nod say-no-more sort of situation. But it’s there on the table, along with other non-marijuana confections — maybe with a little plastic marijuana flower on top just to identify it for the canna-curious, or as a warning to the never-cannabis party-goer.

“In my opinion, the stigma is dying,” Emmett Reistroffer told The Fresh Toast during the 2020 National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) conference in Boston. Reistroffer, a cannabis business advocate and compliance consultant, was instrumental in getting the I-300 social consumption law initiative passed in Colorado in 2016 (that still has some issues to be worked out).

“I want to make sure that whatever laws pass and whatever businesses are open, our neighbors or friends who don’t consume cannabis benefit from what we are doing,” he told us. “That means we need to be responsible. That’s why we advocate for lounges and permitted areas so we have a place that is semi-public where we go to consume without infringing on the rights and happiness of other people.”

Andrew Mieure, owner of Top Shelf Budtending, has served over 70,000 guests at private events and weddings in West Hollywood, Las Vegas, Denver and other adult-use states. He pointed to people walking around during a network event at the NCIA conference, drinking beer and wine. “If somebody is smoking, that permeates the entire area,” Mieure said. “That is a drinkable versus a smokable, and they must be treated differently. So we need places to consume that are well ventilated, and people need to be taken care of differently than at bars.”