Charlotte’s Legendary Lobster Pound in Maine’s Southwest Harbor is now under investigation by the state health department for getting the crustaceans high on weed before sending them to their watery deaths. The restaurant remains open, but you can’t order lifted lobster anymore.
Charlotte Gill, who calls it “smoked” lobster meat and who would pump cannabis smoke into the lobsters’ enclosures, says she hopes to be back to getting lobsters stoned by half-way through October. Gill is a registered medical marijuana patient.
Gill may not get her wish, though. The New York Times reported that Maine health inspectors said the “food served to consumers at licensed eating places and affected by marijuana, as has been described with this establishment, as adulterated and therefore illegal.” With the amount of adulterants in our foods that get by legally, it doesn’t seem like the right argument.
There is absolutely no research on how cannabis affects the state of a lobster’s being. We don’t know if they’re kicked back and experiencing their first impressions of a higher power, just a little more hungry than usual or are totally freaking out that the water’s murky and they can’t see past the tips of their antennae. But that’s not the right argument either.
As cannabis becomes more mainstream, there’s bound to be bountiful half-boiled ideas that come with it. What makes it through the maze of regulations and laws that surround the plant will all come out in the wash, so to speak.
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And though it may fall on deaf ears, Gill does have an argument in her favor regarding the meat being “adulterated.” She says that since it’s being boiled (to 420°), the boiling water would kill any adulterants to be found. (As well as the already baked lobster.) “I’m not selling an edible,” Gill said in her defense.
Gill told the Mount Desert Islander, “I feel bad that when lobsters come here there is no exit strategy. It’s a unique place and you get to do such unique things but at the expense of this little creature. I’ve really been trying to figure out how to make it better.” And she may be right. Perhaps going out in a cloud of high-grade is the way to go. It certainly sounds better than not. Only a handful of Maine lobsters would be able to tell though, and it’s too late for that now.
