Is South Park Joining the Marijuana Industry?

The only thing better than South Park making fun of the weed industry would be South Park entering the weed industry — with some integrity. We're still trying to find out if that's the case, but some online nuggets have us wondering...

Through Tegridy Farms, the name of a fictional cannabis brand that popped up in an episode of the show last year, South Park Studios posted a video on YouTube July 19 that makes fun of the suit-and-tie culture trying to profit from legal cannabis. The clip appears to take aim at MedMen, an American cannabis corporation that released a short video directed by Spike Jonze about cannabis prohibition and current legalization efforts.

The Tegridy Farms parody starts out with scenes similar to MedMen's ad about the Founding Fathers' hemp farms and the War on Drugs, but then starts cutting on "corporate banker types" who "hire fancy Hollywood directors" to make money off legal weed.

"But you know what? Fuck those guys. They ain't got no integrity," South Park character (and man of 'tegrity) Randy Marsh says in the video.

MedMen has given South Park writers plenty of fodder in 2019. The company was part of the New York Medical Cannabis Industry Association, an industry group that reportedly asked New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to keep the home-growing of cannabis illegal if the state legislature decided to legalize recreational pot (it didn't). Then a lawsuit against MedMen surfaced in which a former employee accused company executives of making racist and sexist comments; the NYMCIA dropped MedMen as a member shortly thereafter. The company has also reported severe losses in revenue in recent quarterly reports, despite its value being estimated as high as $1 billion.

But it wasn't all the roasting that got us hot. As first pointed out by Marijuana Moment, some online clues have surfaced suggesting that this might be more than a spoof.

For example, there's now a Tegridy Farms website where the parody video is posted along with an option to enter your email address to "learn more" (we've entered several email addresses and haven't heard back). If you go to the bottom of the page, though, you'll find "Tegridy Farms, LLC" and a private policy page that lists several inactive but registered websites with the word "tegridy," including ”Catatonic Tegridy Bud,” which was introduced in the South Park episode that first featured Tegridy Farms.

Tegridy Farms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages also exist, though they were created in 2018. Still, the Facebook and Instagram pages both have recent posts about Tegridy Farms T-shirt giveaways at San Diego's Comic Con on July 19. (We've reached out to Comedy Central, as well as an email address listed on the Tegridy Farms website, but haven't received a response.)

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are both Colorado boys, who met each other while attending the University of Colorado Boulder; although they moved on long before Colorado became the first state to legalize recreational pot in 2012, weed wasn't unknown in Boulder during their time there.

Is the Tegridy Farms tease just the South Park crew fucking with us? Probably. After all, it'd be a very Cartman move if Stone and Parker did enter the pot trade: Two rich white guys making money off legal cannabis would be very similar to what they're making fun of MedMen for trying to do.

But potheads can dream.