From Pints to Joints: Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founder’s New Cannabis Company
From Pints to Joints: Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founder’s New Cannabis Company
Ben Cohen just launched a weed brand with a high-minded purpose—giving away 100% of its profits to right some of the racial injustices from America’s War on Drugs. Ice cream sold separately.
One summer night in 1970, years before Ben Cohen teamed up with Jerry Greenfield to launch one of America’s most successful ice cream companies, he was smoking a joint with some friends under a lifeguard tower at Jones Beach on Long Island, New York.
Cohen saw the lights of a police car driving towards them and told a friend to get rid of the roach. At that time, marijuana was just as illegal in New York as heroin. And a small doobie could land you in jail.
“‘Ronnie, eat the jay!’” Cohen, now 72, remembers telling his friend. “The cops get out and they’re searching around with their flashlight and sure enough Ronnie didn’t eat it—they found the jay and arrested us.”
At the stationhouse, the two recent high school graduates were strip searched, and things weren’t looking good for a couple of longhaired dopers. “Eventually, as we were white middle-class guys, we ended up getting tickets for littering a lighted cigarette butt on the beach,” says Cohen, in his home office just outside Burlington, Vermont.
The run-in could have changed the course of Cohen’s life—and those of chubby hubbies everywhere. Instead of going to jail, he went to college, dropped out, drove a taxi in New York City, tried his hand at pottery before starting Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream in 1978 with his childhood friend, Jerry, out of an abandoned gas station in Burlington. By 2000, after Ben & Jerry’s was acquired by Unilever for $326 million (around $580 million in current dollars), Cohen pocketed about $40 million, the equivalent of $70 million today.
But all these decades later, Cohen still can’t shake the feeling that if he had been Black, that night in 1970 would have ended very differently. He has good reason to believe that the color of his skin gave him a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card: Black people are nearly four times as likely to get arrested for marijuana possession than white people, despite similar usage rates, according to a report by the ACLU.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2023/05/05/ben–jerrys-cofounder-gets-fully-baked-with-new-nonprofit-cannabis-company/?sh=3fb8d2d04265
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oh i wish i had money.
if you eat ben and Jerry’s and then take a hit from a joint it taste super bad
F those guys
I know your tricks you just want me to get high any more Ben & Jerry’s, which I already do
I see why they are trying to reschedule weed. To help the super rich avoid higher taxes
Well no more ben and Jerry’s for me..
Racist company do your research if you want to support that stuff.
Should have called it Half Baked
I used to have like an inside man and my 2 bestfriends would always bash me saying its fake ben and jerrys dont make wax and id just laugh it off
this man needa stay outta da weed game
Who would buy cannabis from a Woke Joke company like Brn and Jerry’s 😂
420
his weed company shoud be named ben’s but not jerry’s
Ben out here supporting the gospel of mids and im here for it
Thats the dumbest back story ever 😂
Woke bs
Super dope but they buggin abt the low thc count fr
shouldve been "pints to pounds"
Berney Sanders is now into weed?😂
Should’ve been “From pints to pounds” somebody hire me
That’s cap about the Turpines and low THC. He didn’t come up with that. 😂
So big dog is just selling mid at a premium lmao
Don’t like his politics but this checks out for me.
If their joints are anything like their ice cream, I expect high prices, average quality and ridiculous combinations.
Ah, “it’s too strong”, the commercialization truest begins. Don’t forget, tobacco, when not processed like in cigarettes is a powerful psychoactive as well, and the dilution of effects, commercialization and mass production all go hand in hand.
Texas is gonna legalize weed very soon
I can confirm it does increase the ice cream sale
The second I heard it’s to strong now adays means b3 is gonna sell dirt old hippie weed
I can tell you right now this brand is going to fail the fact that his main complaint was the strains nowadays are too strong😖😖😖 grow your own and don’t try to sell it you’ll be greatly disappointed it’s not about what you like it’s about what the customer likes and the customer likes the quality back in the prop 215 days in California if you can’t produce that quality the money’s going to go to someone who can🤗
Monopolies should be illegal. Dude has an empire already and now wants to take another skilled labored empire as his own without any sacrifice. 👎🏽
This is such a good inside look 😂
this is absolutely amazing
From pints to ounces
👀 I was devouring My favorite Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream while watching this 🙏🏾🔥🔥🔥
Thats not fair. Im poor too and want a business loan but im asian soo no go??😅
The only potential to compete with Cookies
Y’all weak 😂
Ben invited to the cook out
I wonder if this new business is also on stolen indian land.
👏👏👏
All that money spent just to grow some mids
How nobody called this from pints to ounces I do not know, they really dropped the ball
30% thc is not enough for me
VT/NH has the worst weed laws.
So weed fa ppl 30-50 in age. Great market 😂
kinda disappointing to hear its gonna be low grade weed hes making, but still cool to know ben is making a cannabis company tho🤣
Idk sounds kinda whack make ice cream medical
Yeah. Getting fcked up on a quarter of a joint is kinda annoying sometimes, depending on the situation.
So the dude that may Ben& Jerry’s decided he’s going to make shitty weed?
so ice cream and weed?