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With the advent of marijuana legalization in parts of the United States, there has been metric shit ton of bizarre trends emerge onto the scene designed to peek America’s boner lust for novelty sensations.
It is now relatively common for crowds of hipsters to sit around coffee shops, sipping CBD-infused lattes while discussing things like beard hygiene and which bathroom is appropriate to use for those who like to pee in the sink. There is also a brand spanking new legion of cannabis users out there that no longer smoke weed, but instead rub it all over their genitalia in hopes of inspiring sexual revelations that have been kept a secret for billions of years by the one known as the masturbator of the universe.
But perhaps the strangest concept we have come across since the dawning of legalization is a restaurant in Maine that is using marijuana to get lobsters blasted out of their minds in an effort to more humanely put them on a plate when the Grim Reaper shows up for dinner.
Charlotte’s Legendary Lobster Pound, in Southwest Harbor, has taken the lobster bake to the next level by allowing its culinary crustaceans to get wrecked on marijuana before being boiled, cracked, and consumed.
Instead of just tossing these shellfish into the tank and letting them freak out until their bodies hit a pot of boiling water, the restaurant places the fresh lobsters in a box of water for a few minutes and pumps it full of pot smoke. It’s sort of like a bong with a sea animal chilling inside.
Cass Anderson
Although this method for mellowing out the lobsters began as an experiment, presumably one conducted at a time when the restaurant staff was super stoned and the sous-chef said, “Hey, check it out, the lobster likes weed,” owner Charlotte Gill says it has kept their catches so at ease about their brief captivity that it is no longer necessary to restrict their pinchers with rubber bands.
A report from the Mount Desert Islander shows that this hotbox technique was inspired by a series of tests run by the Swiss government. Some studies have shown that lobsters feel no pain when they are boiled or steamed, while others have suggested the contrary. Nevertheless, Switzerland recently deemed it illegal for lobsters to be prepared in this way. A more humane approach, according to the country’s updated standards, is electrocution or gouging their eyes out with a knife prior to the boil.
“These are both horrible options,” Gill told the Islander. “If we’re going to take a life we have a responsibility to do it as humanely as possible.”
It should be noted that not every clawed monster that comes into Charlotte’s Legendary Lobster Pound has the opportunity to get stoned before it dies. Because this method is new and slightly controversial, the restaurant only gives lobsters THC sedations at the request of the customer. Some people are still concerned that this THC-infused technique could be transferred and cause them to test dirty during the next work-related drug test.
But Gill says this can’t happen.
“THC breaks down completely by 392 degrees, therefore we will use both steam as well as a heat process that will expose the meat to 420 degree extended temperature, in order to ensure there is no possibility of carryover effect (even though the likelihood of such would be literally impossible),” she said.