When I first learned about the luxury world of CBD and cannabis, I felt like the Little Mermaid with her treasure fork (AKA Dinglehopper). Look at this stuff! Isn’t it neat! But the move of cannabis and CBD into luxury is more complicated than you might think. Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, explains that there’s always been a lux component to weed. Even when it was illegal almost everywhere, there was a market for upscale cannabis. You could pay more for quality, or a nice bong. He says baby boomers have also been spending their money on hemp creams and products for decades. “The expensive CBD creams might seem new, but there’s a long history to it,” Owusu-Bempah explains. “Women who drive Subarus and eat trail mix and have some money, they’ve been buying hemp… But now it’s all become more mainstream.”