In Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, the eternally stoned titular characters lose their weed, get bitten by a raccoon, have to perform surgery on a stranger, get arrested, find Neil Patrick Harris, are invited to join the world’s least appealing group sex configuration, and ride a cheetah, all before they make it to the beacon of sliders. Maybe that’s why—despite having the “most craveable” burgers in the country, according to one survey—White Castle didn’t make the cut on a recent list of pot smokers’ fave fast food joints.
According to the Green Market Report, when legal cannabis consumers get the munchies, they are most likely to head straight for a set of Golden Arches. The company conducted a survey of dispensary customers to determine which fast food they craved after getting blazed (or after responsibly eating the edible of their choice) and McDonald’s was the hands-down winner. In the past four weeks, 43 percent of dispensary patrons had gone to McDonald’s, followed by 18.3 percent who’d been to Taco Bell and 17.8 percent who opted for Wendy’s. The other restaurants that had a high percentage of equally high customers included Burger King, Subway, and KFC, respectively.
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“As far as McDonalds, I believe they win out at this point due to sheer size and number of locations,” Jeff Stein, vice president of Consumer Research Around Cannabis, told MUNCHIES. “As fast food restaurants begin to utilize consumer research such as ours, they will start to close the gap on McDonald’s by understanding cannabis consumer habits across many different variables like income, type of cannabis usage, recreational or medical, fast food habits, and interests in healthier choices.” (Consumer Research Around Cannabis partnered with the Green Market Report to conduct this and other market research, as part of a joint effort they’re calling ‘Cannabis Freakonomics’).
Stein said that, for this national study, his organization surveyed over 27,000 people in 25 markets, and each participant was asked about his or her marijuana use, including whether it was purchased from a licensed dispensary. The fast food portion focused on five US markets: Denver, Las Vegas, Portland, Sacramento and Washington, DC. McDonald’s was the go-to stoner food destination in each one, although the arrangement of the runners-up differed. Las Vegas was the only city in which McD’s didn’t win by a red-eyed landslide; it narrowly edged Jack-in-the-Box by three percentage points.
Green Market Report co-founder Cynthia Salarizadeh thought the results were “disturbing”—her word. “These results make it clear that more affordable healthier options need to become available,” she said. “If there were tasty organic options available at every corner, I guarantee these figures would alter significantly in most of these cities.”
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She also thinks that this survey might’ve been responsible for McDonald’s big stock market gains on the day the results were released. “[It] made quite the splash,” she said.
Scientists have tried to figure out why weed gives us the munchies in the first place, and have debated theories that include whether cannabinoids affect hunger-controlling neurons in the hypothalamus and whether pot just tricks our brains into making food both taste and smell better than usual.
Either way, that might explain the popularity of all those Egg McMuffins.