British stoners giggled with glee last week after a pot-legalization advocate handed an unwitting Queen Elizabeth a bouquet of marijuana buds – which she accepted with a smile.
“I was behind a barrier close to [her] limo, and I just shouted ‘Your Majesty,'” said Colin Davies, founder of the Medical Marijuana Co-operative, which defies British law to give grass to multiple sclerosis sufferers and others.
“She turned around and came up to me with a lovely smile. Her eyes lit up when she saw the pale yellow blooms,” said Davies, who grew the pungent, spiky-leafed plant himself, then wrapped it in floral paper and put a pretty green bow on it.
The publicity stunt comes on the heels of a weed war that flared up in Parliament two weeks ago, when Shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe called for a zero-tolerance crackdown on pot.
Her initiative quickly hit the skids when seven of Widdecombe’s Cabinet colleagues admitted to having smoked pot – one even claiming he enjoyed it.
Red-faced royal aides insisted the reefer bouquet given to the queen never made it inside the gates of Buckingham Palace, where the Beatles are said to have fired up a doobie in the bathroom before meeting her majesty in 1965.
Instead, the aides said, the pot was probably given to a local hospital by police, who routinely turn over flower arrangements given to the royals to the sick. But nobody really knows what became of the buds.
“It was a harmless way of trying to bring to the notice of her majesty the ludicrous restrictions on cannabis,” Davies said.
The Beatles’ joint in the john notwithstanding, the historical high point at Buckingham may have been Queen Victoria’s rumored smoke-outs to relieve menstrual pains.