As summer comes to a close, many are looking forward to the cool temperatures and warm spices of fall — not to mention the next big holiday: Halloween. Regardless of your Halloween traditions — whether you stay in to watch scary movies or go out to raucous parties — you will need a costume come October 31.
Instead of buying the first outfit you find at the Halloween store or, worse, skipping the costume altogether, you might glean inspiration from your favorite hobby: cannabis.
The following cannabis-inspired costumes are relatively easy to put together and are certain to make other stoners smile.
The Zig Zag Man
When it comes to rolling papers, the best brand you can buy is Zig Zag. Zig Zags are inexpensive, easier to roll than many more deluxe options, and they burn delightfully slowly, allowing you to savor your joint or blunt.
This Halloween, you can pay homage to the pinnacle of rolling papers by dressing up as their iconic mascot, the Zig Zag man.
To make this costume, all you need is a beard and pointed mustache, a red or orange beanie and a lit joint. You can get bonus points if you use green body paint and dress in red or orange, which more closely mimics the packaging for the standard 1 1/4-inch papers.
The Dude
The Dude from “The Big Lebowski” is a pop culture icon — a hero who outsmarts several antagonists and does so with impeccable stoner style. Ironically, to nail his performance of the Dude in the film, Jeff Bridges stopped smoking weed, but you don’t have to do that to create the perfect Dude costume.
You can find a few premade Dude outfits online, but you should be able to throw together a Dude costume from thrift store finds. All you need is a long, beige or off-white robe, a white T-shirt and some dark plaid shorts. Finish the look with bedhead, dark sunglasses and a white Russian.
Mary Jane
When Spanish speakers brought recreational cannabis use to the U.S., they brought a whole bunch of cannabis slang, too.
They used the term “marijuana” instead of “hemp” or “cannabis,” and when marijuana became taboo, they hid discussions about the drug by talking about a mysterious woman named Maria Juana. English-speaking stoners adapted this term for themselves, opting to call weed Mary Jane.
Your Mary Jane costume can be as creative as you like, but it needs to evoke the iconic marijuana leaf.
You might don a green body-con dress and accessorize with leaves, like a leafy headband, leaf-shaped necklace, leaf glasses and the like. A more intense Mary Jane outfit involves buying or making a dress with a cannabis leaf pattern.
Alternatively, you could dress up as cannabis culture’s real-life Mary Jane, Mary Jane Rathbun. This good Samaritan popularized the pot brownie by distributing cannabis-laced baked goods to give comfort to patients amidst the AIDS epidemic.
A Brownie Mary costume might involve baking attire, like a leaf-emblazoned apron speckled with flower, and enough special brownies for the whole party.
Lost Weed
It can be devastating to search your pockets (or your stash) for a baggie of bud, only to find it missing. Lost weed is a true tragedy, but it could also be an inspiration for your next great Halloween costume. T
o accomplish this look, you need a green bodysuit and a significant supply of fake moss, which you can find at most dollar stores and all craft stores. Using hot glue, adhere the moss to your bodysuit.
A Pot Head
Perhaps the easiest and certainly the punniest Halloweed costume, this pothead requires almost no preparation. All you need is either a cooking pot or a flowerpot to place on your head like a hat.
If you want to put a little more effort into the look, you might tape cannabis leaves to the outside of the pot, to drive home the pun.
If you are going to go this route, the least you could do is carry around some flower from a Las Vegas dispensary, so you can reward those who get your costume with a well-deserved toke.
If you don’t like any of the above costume ideas, you might need to get a little more creative. Perhaps a creativity-enhancing strain will help you think of a wonderful, weedy costume before Halloween hits.
