BY CECILIA OLECK Detroit Free Press
TROY, Mich. – Looking to add Trippy Krispy Treats to your holiday hors d’oeuvres list?
Until this week, you could find a recipe for the marijuana-laced sweets in a cookbook sold at the newly opened Urban Outfitters at the Somerset Collection mall in Troy, Mich.
But the hip store – which caters to the trendy high school and college crowd with cool clothes, edgy books and games, and funky home decorations – pulled “The Marijuana Chef Cookbook” by S.T. Oner after a Troy group complained. Teenagers and other shoppers “didn’t go there specifically to be exposed to that,” said Ann Comiskey , executive director of the Troy Community Coalition for the Prevention of Drug and Alcohol Abuse , the group that raised concerns to Urban Outfitters’ local managers. “They went there to buy clothes or a handbag. They went to buy a T-shirt and, `Oh, by the way, here’s a book on marijuana.’ ”
Calls to the Troy store were referred to the company’s Philadelphia headquarters. A spokeswoman there declined to comment. She would not say whether the book had been pulled from other stores. The cookbook was still available Friday on the retailer’s Web site,
The Urban Outfitters store in Ann Arbor, Mich., never got the cookbook, but an employee who answered the phone Friday said the store does sell a board game called “Weed the Game.” It’s not the first time the chain has been criticized for its merchandise. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People opposed its “Ghettopoly” game and the Anti-Defamation League objected to a T-shirt that read, “New Mexico, Cleaner than Regular Mexico.”
The retailer also was criticized when it sold a T-shirt reading “Voting Is for Old People” and another emblazoned with shopping bags and money signs that read “Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl.”
Coalition members were pleased that Urban Outfitters removed the marijuana cookbooks, but some shoppers didn’t understand the controversy. “If you don’t like something they’re selling, don’t buy it,” said 15-year-old Jay Savage of Clinton Township, Mich., who visited Urban Outfitters for the first time Wednesday with his mom and 18-year-old sister Natalie.
Jay said he hadn’t noticed any of the store’s edgier items, including drinking and sex card games, but that it wouldn’t have stopped him from going there for the clothes. But Comiskey said Urban Outfitters was sending the wrong message . “Selling books on how to do something illegal – like how to pack a good joint – that’s a risk for our kids.”