CNN’s anchors have repeatedly enjoyed a few laughs in their often-giggly coverage of legal recreational pot sales in Colorado. But their coverage got particularly weird and slap-happy last week when CNN reporter Randi Kaye tagged along on a smoked-out tour with Colorado Rocky Mountain High Tours and an effervescent group of older pot tourists for a segment on “Anderson Cooper 360.”
A couple stoney, memorable moments from the thoroughly strange video (above):
3:40: Colorado-rooted tour operator Addison Morse had her quote at the ready: “We were built on silver, gold and oil, and now we’re built on the green — and it’s really good green.”
4:17: Kaye interviewed a stoned tour participant in the limo about her preferred lunch stop: “You guys are demanding tacos?” Indeed, they were demanding tacos.
4:35: From his studio perch in New York, Cooper seemed somewhat concerned about his colleague, who was undoubtedly acting silly and perhaps faded when he asked, “How extensive was your research in the back of that limo?”
Kaye answered a bit too honestly: “We did very extensive research, I have to tell you. My brain was a little fuzzy by the time I got out of there … I wasn’t thinking right. I couldn’t remember even some of the questions I wanted to ask in the interview, which has never happened to me when I’m reporting in the field. And I found things to be really funny — much funnier than I normally do. So I think we got a bit of a contact high there.”
5:28: Altered-state Kaye: “If you saw those joints … they were like the size of small cannons.”
6:22: Concerned Cooper, in retort to his colleague: “Did you say those joints were like smoking cannons?”
6:46: When Cooper asked Kaye at the end of the interview how much longer she was staying in Colorado, she seemed unsettled: “I think I need to come home.”