In the YouTube video posted by “web influencer” Rosanna Pansino (over 14 million YouTube subscribers—I’m all the way up to around 230 followers in my recent return to Twitter/X!—the 39-year-old baking star smokes her dead father’s ashes in accordance with his dying wish. She says her father, dying of leukemia, wanted her to grow a marijuana plant with his ashes and then smoke him. So five years after he died, with his pot plant flourishing, Pansino lit a joint that had particles of her father in it and smoked it for the entertainment of her YouTube audience.
Classy. So tasteful.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day…
“Is this unethical, or just icky?”
Dad’s dead, so it can be argued that this disgusting stunt doesn’t hurt anyone. That’s the Ick over Ethics position. On the other side, we have these factors to consider…
- Her father was obviously a pot-addled jerk. Just because he asked for her to do something icky with his remains doesn’t make it a good idea. What if he saked her to mummify his head and hang it from the chandelier?
- I’m pretty sure Dad didn’t tell her to broadcast smoking him to the world. She’s exploiting her weird father’s weird last wish as a promotional device. Crass.
- Regular readers here already know my unalterable position on promoting pot use. This stunt only adds to a social contagion.
What’s your conclusion?
Ethics Alarms 
I am too stuck on the ick factor to analyze much further.
-Jut
Who is Rosanna Pansino and why does the world care about her? Whew. Having said that, I think it is the “ick” factor more than anything, notwithstanding my position on pot’s legality. I suspect there is little in the way of Dad’s being in a pot plant fertilized with his ashes (that is an assumption on my part because I lasted all of 37 seconds watching the trailer). If she had rolled his ashes mixed in with pot, well, that would be different.
It does beg the question, though: Who are these influencers and who really cares about what they say, think, feel, or do? If the 2024 election results are an indication, the celebrity endorsement and/or influencer . . . erm . . . influence is vastly overrated.
jvb
Wasn’t there a dreary ’60s pop song, “Dust in the Wind” which asserted, “all we are is dust in the wind”?
1977 Kansas – Dust in the Wind
https://youtu.be/tH2w6Oxx0kQ?si=WqTQS41a4Xrg0IIt
Well, Daddy will certainly dust in the wind, just a different wind, a windpipe.
the smoking is icky
broadcasting it is unethical.
narcissistic is the best opinion I have for the influencer.
Roll me up and smoke me when I die.
She’s acting just as I would expect from someone raised by a “pot-addled jerk.”
There has to be something significantly lacking in the personality of anyone who would allow themselves to be “influenced” by someone like this.