Lifestyle

How pot is infiltrating New York’s most elite social circles

When 62-year-old Jeri hosts her weekly canasta game at her posh Madison Avenue pad, she puts out a spread. There are salads, sushi, cookies, vodka cocktails and of course, a pipe, marijuana and gummy edibles — cannabis-infused candy.

“The other day, we were stoned out of our minds, under-the-floor hysterical,” said Jeri, a retired celebrity jewelry designer. “My friends came at 12:30 p.m. and didn’t leave until 6:30 p.m. Everyone wants to come to my house.”

It’s a shift from the first time Jeri, who asked that her last name not be used, first offered her well-heeled gal pals some pot a year and a half ago.

“The girls looked at me like, ‘What are you doing?’ It was like I had a weapon on me.”

Nowadays, thanks in part to her son, who works in the marijuana business in Colorado, her friends can’t get enough.

“They are texting me, ‘Can you hook me up?’ Like all of a sudden, I’ve turned into the Madison Avenue drug dealer?” she joked. “It’s great.”

A few years ago, the stiff-lipped Upper East Side crowd would have been aghast at the idea of cannabis sitting on the table alongside their William Poll canapés. But with Massachusetts in November becoming the eighth state (plus the District of Columbia) to legalize the drug for recreational purposes, and with more and more savvy New Yorkers investing in the burgeoning industry, marijuana has infiltrated the most exclusive circles in town.

“It used to be a thing — if you did pot brownies at a party, no one would ever talk to you again,” said a 40-something Manhattan socialite in the beauty industry.

“Now, the first thing people give you when you walk into their house are edibles . . . and these are Fortune 500 CEOs — Upper East Side, rule-abiding people.”

While recreational marijuana is still illegal in New York state and medical marijuana is only legal for those with serious diseases, more and more Gothamites are getting high. Some rely on discreet dealers, while others have tapped local chefs to make them custom marijuana-infused treats on the down low. And then, of course, there is the private-jet delivery method.

It used to be a thing — if you did pot brownies at a party, no one would ever talk to you again. Now, the first thing people give you when you walk into their house are edibles.

The Manhattan socialite who winters in Aspen, Colo., said her pot-loving friends are always trying to get her to transport weed for them from Colorado to New York on her private plane.

“I am the most popular girl,” she said with a laugh.

Gummy edibles, often resembling Sour Patch Kids, are big among parents on the bar mitzvah circuit, according to an NYC fashion publicist in her 40s.

“You can go to multiple bar mitzvahs in a month with the same people again and again,” she said. “There’s only so much drinking people can do. Plus, at bar mitzvahs, the music is blasting, people are running around a lot, and there’s all the candy that’s already out there for the kids. It’s the perfect place. You take it after the cocktail hour when you don’t need to worry about making conversation anymore.”

For those looking for more of a “slight shift,” an Upper East side mother who invests in the cannabis arena prefers microdose edibles in the form of chocolate-covered coffee beans, which can be 25 percent as powerful as a typical gummy candy.

“It’s like what you’d get with a glass of wine,” she said. “Snow days are a popular time to take them. There is an ongoing joke: ‘Is this a one- or two-coffee-bean snow day?’ A lot of 40-year-old women don’t want to go out and make snowmen in the cold with their kids. But after a coffee bean or two, you love the snow. You love snowmen. You love sledding. You love it all so much, you’re posting pics online.”

The most sought after items on the market? Marijuana­-infused topical lotions, which can be used for any­thing from pain relief to en­hanced sex.
These are typically high in cannabidiol, also known as CBD — a cannabis compound with medical benefits — and low in THC, which is the psychoactive component of marijuana. (CBD-only products are legal in New York.)

In the March issue of Town & Country, Carol Mack, who’s married to Earle Mack, a former ambassador to Finland, wrote about how the trendiest hostess gift in Aspen is a vaginal cream said to increase sexual pleasure.

But an anonymous Manhattan socialite says buyers should beware. “It gives you a horrible yeast infection,” she said. “Everyone I know who’s tried it has ended up at the doctor. It also is brown and stains your sheets.”

No doubt, the stigma surrounding marijuana has subsided in the past few years.

“This summer on the East End, edibles will be the new rosé,” declared Upper East Side chronicler Wednesday Martin.

And Mack told The Post that she used to feel compelled to clarify that her 26-year-old, Harvard-educated son wasn’t a pothead when he decided to start working in the industry two years ago.
“I had to tiptoe around it,” said Mack, a Palm Beach resident with a pied-a-terre on the Upper East Side. “But now it is such an open subject. I have people coming up to me, ‘Oh, I know a lawyer who does [work in the cannabis field].’ Or, ‘This is an asset class that our company is looking into.’ ”

Already, the green stuff is omnipresent at NYC charity events, including the ballyhooed Met Gala, according to the anonymous socialite.

“Every year, all those celebrities are standing in the bathroom vaping,” said the socialite, adding that the Volcano — a nearly $600 digital mega­vaporizer that converts cannabis more efficiently with minimal smell and fewer harmful effects than smoking — is the go­ to Upper East Side party centerpiece.

But not everyone is cool with Mary Jane.

“A lot of people are still embar­rassed to admit they like it,” said one 55­-year­-old Midtown private­ equity wife who is a partner in Lord Jones, a cannabis-­infused­ product company.
“A lot of the time, the stigma comes from their husbands, who are generally the ‘Masters of the Universe’ types.”

And there can be technical issues that some high rollers are still figuring out.

“Most people don’t know how to dose marijuana,” said the anonymous socialite. “A chocolate bar is 100 milligrams in 10-milligram pieces. The average woman needs 2 to 3 milligrams, which is half of one piece. And it takes one to two hours to kick in. So what happens is people don’t feel it at first, or they’re taking it when eating, so they take more and they take too much and they are so high they can’t move … You see that a lot.”

(While the likelihood of a fatal overdose on marijuana is significantly slimmer than that of alcohol, studies have shown that marijuana use can cause loss of productivity and hallucinations. Extreme paranoia and anxieties can occur when too great a quantity is taken.)

But despite potential pitfalls, the socialite source said cannabis’ newfound celebrity status among the beau monde set is very much welcomed.

“Well, obviously, because most people are boring as s–t without it,” she added.