Luca Morand, a 22-year-old butcher in Marseille, France, is very proud of his newest sausages. He currently sells them for €50 per kilogram—about $24 a pound, if you’re into the whole Imperial thing—and he says that he’s moved about 15 kilos worth in the past three weeks. “I’d never sold so many sausages so quickly,” he gushed.
These aren’t just regular breakfast links, though: After spending several months messing about with the right recipe and talking to suppliers, Morand has developed a chipolata-style sausage that contains CBD (cannabidiol, the non-psychotropic active ingredient from the hemp plant), and he believes he’s the only butcher in France who has weed-infused meats in his display cases.
Videos by VICE
”I went to see several [CBD] suppliers to see their prices, as I would do for any onion sausage. But this time the ‘onion’ is really expensive, €13 a gram,” he told La Provence. He’s called the resulting sausages Ouidi—pronounced ‘weedy’—because, well, he’s 22.
Morand told the news outlet that he’d been dreaming about creating a CBD sausage for more than three years, ever since the idea hit him during a summer barbecue with some friends. (Follow your dreams, kids!) Now he’s selling them at his own shop to a customer base that he describes as “inter-generational.”
Although marijuana isn’t legal in France, CBD products are, provided that the THC content remains less than 0.2% per gram. (According to The Local, if you’re caught smoking a joint, you’ll score a €200 fine. Smoking sausages, though, seems to be alright.)
Morand is stoked about his sausage—as he should be—but he’s not the first person to daydream about combining CBD and encased meats. In April, the Brat House in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, added its own version to the menu. The Pineapple Express is a CBD-infused bratwurst, topped with pineapple-habanero salsa, and served with CBD-infused sauerkraut and CBD-infused mustard.
“This is what comfort food should be,” the Brat House’s head chef, Craig Mastalir, told WISN. “It makes me feel good because of the local connection between [the Brat House, the meat market, and the hemp farm], and gives me balance and energy because… ya know, the CBD”
That same month, the New Seasons market in Portland, Oregon, also started to carry its own CBD sausage, but it’s a slightly different version. The pork in these kielbasa doesn’t contain CBD, but it’s made with Coalition Brewing’s CBD-infused Two Flowers IPA. “The result is a sausage that really tastes like the Pacific Northwest, with a mellow, easygoing flavor profile punctuated by unexpectedly funky undercurrents that give you something to think about,” Willamette Week wrote.
You hear that, Luca? Does your sausage have funky undercurrents? U-S-A! U-S-A!
