The lazy stoner is dead. In his place stands the marathon runner with the minimalist vape and the CBD recovery gel. Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie, now streaming, is the last bastion of the countercultural original.
The stereotype of the lazy, good-for-nothing stoner, the one who sat glued to the couch staring into space and thinking about everything while wolfing down a bag of soggy chips, is dead and buried, and no one showed up to the funeral. A few Hail Marys, a farewell, and it’s time to lay it to rest. In fact, with Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie now streaming on Paramount+, the road trip documentary from the kings of ’70s slackerism, we come full circle. They were at the vanguard of chaos, the ones who taught us that you could live in a cloud of smoke with the cops breathing down your neck. But today, that “lazy, good-for-nothing” model is a museum piece, a relic as dated as a moldy VHS of Up in Smoke (great movie, btw!).
Cannabis marketing has taken a sharp turn. We’ve gone from an aesthetic of neon weed leaves and textbook reggae to an identity that’s pure design and high performance. Today, the new face of weed isn’t Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, nor is it the Dude Lebowski in his bathrobe with his White Russian. Not at all. It’s your grandma using CBD drops for her rheumatism before meeting up with other old ladies to blow her pension at bingo, it’s the professional microdosing before an important meeting, and it’s the athlete using hemp gel to recover muscle fibers.
The industry understood that the “stoner” is no longer its standard and that, at this point in history, that characterization isn’t paying off. Now the trend is functional wellness. We’re in the era of the “Pro Stoner“: guys who run marathons, program in Python (I have no idea what “Python” is, I just had to Google it), and whose houses are cleaner than an operating room. Gone is the image of the messy room smelling like dead rat and damp patches on the walls. What’s in now is cannabis gummies and vapes that look like they were designed by Steve Jobs himself, or luxury brands that sell flowers in minimalist packaging.
We’re witnessing a total paradigm shift. Cannabis has gone from being the refuge of the outsider to fueling the system. We’ve gone from the countercultural resistance of Cypress Hill’s basement to the aisle of premium products that reek of corporate success. Was something lost along the way? Sure. The mystique of danger always had its charm. But this new, more athletic and less sedentary identity represents the triumph of normalization. That’s worth considering too. In time, we will figure out whether it’s good or bad.
Thus, the documentary, which premiered at SXSW and reached theaters on 4/20 before landing on streaming, arrives at just the right moment to remind us of where we come from and to underscore that the mirror now reflects a different image: less red eyes and more hyperfocus.
In the film, we see our heroes far from the thick smoke plumes (well, not entirely, but less so), transformed into great-uncles who, although they still have their spark, no longer inhabit that chaos. Seeing them there is to understand that even the generals of unbridled excess have retired to make way for the CEOs of wellness. And in the search for those grimy beginnings, an ecosystem emerges that seems prehistoric compared to the dispensaries with haute couture jewelry store aesthetics that now lie in wait in the streets of California.
With that same momentum, the documentary relies on the one thing that marketing can’t manufacture: chemistry. They can sell you the most expensive vape in the world, or the most precise hydroponic, AI-powered growing system on the market, but the chemistry of these cool old guys remains the only truth chanted in a sea of generic brands, influencers dreaming of interactions, and sports stars in the relentless pursuit of cash. But the coin kept spinning in the air.
Things have changed. The world has changed. You have changed. The present has changed. And so has the future. That’s why you no longer have to wait for the high to wear off to start the day. In the future, that high may be, let’s say, what helps you conquer the day. A little more mechanical than yesterday. A little less mechanical than tomorrow.
