Once a symbol of abundance, the cannabis goody bag has gotten leaner. Maybe what’s disappearing isn’t just free weed, but a culture of generosity.
Three years ago on 4/20, I attempted something wildly ambitious: creating a beautiful cannabis goody bag for my first live event: “Women, Writing, Weed and Wine.”
Not decent or okay or one of those sad little sacks you politely accept before quietly abandoning it in the backseat of your Camry. I wanted gold. My audience was pretty easy to define: book lovers who loved weed and weed lovers who believed in the power of books. The goody bag had to honor both.
I didn’t have deep industry connections, but I did have an Outlook email account, formidable optimism, and absolutely no shame about cold-emailing cannabis brands.
I drove across California freeways like I was competing in a cannabis scavenger hunt. I made my way to Laguna Niguel for lipstick-shaped ashtrays. I visited a manufacturing office floating above Santee Alley for beautifully designed pre-rolls. I picked up blood orange THC seltzers in a West L.A. parking lot and wine-flavored cannabis gummies outside a townhouse in North Long Beach that felt suspiciously like a spy exchange.
Authors, healers, and artists joined in too, contributing free courses, complimentary sessions, and art prints. In the end, I had a gift bag that reflected everything “Women, Writing, Weed and Wine” was supposed to be.
But the scavenger hunt taught me something else: The best cannabis goody bag isn’t necessarily the biggest one. A good gift is much less about price tag and weight than curation and connection. Most of us have received an expensive gift that felt completely phoned in, a tone-deaf gift card or something clearly grabbed at the last minute from a dusty garage. Many of us have also received something inexpensive that somehow felt like the world because the giver had clearly been paying attention.
You knew they had observed you. You knew they had taken valuable time out of their life to think about what might actually delight you.
That’s the standard I think cannabis should be chasing. Not abundance for abundance’s sake, but thoughtful generosity.
A Culture Built on Generosity
I come from a long lineage of gift givers. I’m Nigerian American, Yoruba specifically, and where I come from, no celebration is complete without sending people home with a little token of appreciation. Weddings. Naming ceremonies. Milestone birthdays. Even wakes. It doesn’t matter what we’re commemorating, who has left or arrived on planet Earth. You’re leaving with a gift.
Now, sometimes that gift is a Tupperware container with the celebrant’s beaming face screen-printed on the side. And while I don’t know anyone exactly begging for commemorative food storage, the point is that somebody thought about you enough to send you home with something.
Cannabis has its own tradition of generosity. What other commodity is handed around to casual acquaintances with such benevolent goodwill? Nobody walks into a brewery and starts passing around pints of IPA. I’ve never been handed magic mushrooms at a concert with a simple nod and an outstretched hand. Even wineries charge for tastings.
Yet somewhere, every single day, someone lights a joint and passes it around a circle. Puff, puff, pass isn’t just good cannabis etiquette. It’s an active philosophy of generosity.
For a long time, the cannabis goody bag felt like an extension of that same instinct. Here, try this. Take this home. Tell me what you think. Share it with somebody. The bag wasn’t simply stuff. At its best, it was hospitality.
When the Bags Got Lighter
My own goody bag experiment made me realize how much the bags I encounter at cannabis events have changed. I remember opening bags that had weight. You’d unzip one and discover a treasure chest of pre-rolls, vape cartridges, topicals, chocolates, tinctures, beverages, rolling papers, grinders, and products you genuinely couldn’t wait to try and tell all your weed-loving friends about.
Today, I’m more likely to dig past pamphlets, magnets, keychains, stickers, and branded clutter looking for the actual cannabis. At one event, the gifted pre-roll was so astonishingly tiny that my friend stared at it for several seconds before announcing that it resembled a micropenis.
Unfortunately, the metaphor was apt.
I’m not going to pretend I have a spreadsheet explaining exactly why the great cannabis goody bag has been shrinking. Maybe budgets have changed. Maybe marketing priorities have changed. Maybe companies have gotten more selective about where they put their products.
Whatever the combination, the experience feels different. And honestly, some of that change may be overdue. The last thing Mother Earth needs is another promotional lanyard. Most of us do not need a branded water bottle sleeve that will spend the next thousand years contemplating its existence in a landfill. A tote stuffed to its seams with things nobody wants isn’t generosity. It’s somebody else’s marketing closet becoming your problem.
Even Nigerian party favors have evolved. The giant, name-forward food containers are increasingly being replaced by things people might actually use: a face towel, a handheld fan, a sweet treat. The generosity remains. The pile of stuff gets smaller.
Cannabis could learn something from that.
Less Swag, More Meaning
Less doesn’t automatically have to mean worse. Maybe the shrinking goody bag gives us an opportunity to think about what a cannabis gift is actually for. A thoughtful bag should feel less like someone tipped a promotional supply closet into a tote and more like somebody understood who was walking through the door.
We throw around the word “community” constantly in cannabis. But what does community mean if we don’t know who we’re sharing space with?
A technology conference shouldn’t send people home with the same bag as a literary cannabis salon. Concentrate heads might lose their minds over a beautiful glass tip or a genuinely useful hash accessory. The readers at my event might be happier with an artisanal pre-roll, a maximalist lighter, an art print, and a notebook cute enough that they won’t immediately lose it under the passenger seat.
Sometimes the gift doesn’t even need to be a product.
Maybe it’s a workshop where somebody finally explains resin and rosin without making everyone feel like they wandered into an organic chemistry final. Maybe it’s a neighborhood weed crawl. Maybe it’s time with somebody who knows the plant deeply and can answer the questions people are usually too embarrassed to ask.
Maybe it’s just a beautifully made hemp tote you’ll actually carry to Trader Joe’s every Saturday instead of another synthetic bag destined to reproduce beneath your kitchen sink.
The point is less about giving people more and more about giving them the right thing. And there’s a radical idea cannabis brands could try: Ask. Ask the people who attend your events what they keep. Ask what they use. Ask what they loved enough to tell somebody about six months later and what went directly into the trash. True generosity isn’t about giving the most. It’s about paying attention.
Consumers have responsibilities here too. I’ve been to my fair share of cannabis events throughout Los Angeles. I’ve watched people breeze through the door, grab the goody bag, and immediately disappear before speaking to a single vendor or attendee.
It feels a little like showing up to Thanksgiving, filling a plate, and leaving before saying hello to Grandma. In a word: rude. There’s something strange about demanding “community” from cannabis brands while interacting with them exclusively as sources of free shit.
If we want companies to keep investing in meaningful gatherings, we have to participate in the gathering. Ask somebody a question. Stay for the panel. Meet somebody new. If you genuinely love something you tried, buy it later. Tell a friend. Not because consumers owe brands loyalty for handing over a pre-roll, but because community has never been a one-way transaction.
The cannabis culture I fell in love with was built through relationships. Somebody knew somebody. Somebody grew something. Somebody rolled it. Somebody passed it to the left. People showed up.
Keep Passing It Around
I miss the oversized cannabis goody bags. Of course I do. I miss the voluptuous pre-rolls, the fancy edibles, the mystery beverages, and that little jolt of greed when you got home from an event, emptied everything across your bed, and realized you had enough weed-adjacent treasure to keep you entertained for a month.
But I think what I really miss is the oversized generosity they represented. That doesn’t mean the cannabis goody bag of the future has to be heavier. It should be smarter. Stranger. More personal. Less landfill. More delight.
Instead of asking, “What can we hand people?” maybe the better question is, “Who are the people we’re welcoming?”
Then give accordingly. Generosity is the cannabis culture I fell in love with. And I think it’s still worth passing around.
Contributor Content Disclaimer: This article was written by an external contributor and reflects the author’s personal experiences and opinions. High Times reviewed and edited the piece for clarity, accuracy, and publication standards.
